by Jane Hill
At one point I'd planned to get a place to study drama, but was now thankful that I'd eventually chosen English. I'd selected my college on the basis that it was said to have an active drama society but I didn't think I'd be bothering with it now, now I knew for sure that I couldn't act.
'Oh.' Joanna didn't seem that interested. 'What are you doing with yourself this summer?'
'I've got a job. I'm going to work for this friend of Dad's. In an office. He's an accountant. I'll be doing filing, I guess.' I had no idea what the job would entail as I only had a shaky grasp of what accountants actually did. Something to do with money and maths, two subjects I knew very little about. But I knew I was lucky to be offered a decent job and that the pay would be useful. A lot of my friends from school were spending the summer travelling, but I couldn't afford to go anywhere.
'Nonsense,' said Joanna. ' Y o u can't work in a dreadful office. Why don't you come to San Francisco and stay with me?'
I laughed. I thought she was probably joking. She was my sister's godmother, not mine. I hardly knew her. And if she wasn't joking, then she was just taking pity on me after my outburst. I looked at her face, all lean and cheekboney. She seemed serious. 'Really?' I asked.
'Yes, really. Now, we'd better get back to see what ghastly clothes my god-daughter has chosen for her going-away outfit.'
Eleven
Something was off from the moment I arrived in San Francisco. Joanna wasn't there to meet me at the airport. That's odd, isn't it? Y o u tell your mother's oldest friend, your sister's godmother, what time your flight arrives, you expect her to be there to meet you. It's part of the job. I rang her number. She answered, sounding like she barely remembered who I was, and told me to catch the airport bus.
The 'airport bus' was a minibus, driven by an ageing hippie. Six or seven of us – some Japanese students, two men who I assumed were gay, a pair of German tourists and me – gave him addresses and directions and he wove his way around the city, dropping us off in turn. I tried to take up as little room as possible as I stared out of the window and took in the scenery. Restaurants and fast-food places – ugly buildings in the middle of big car parks. Petrol stations. Here and there a small shopping mall. Random outcrops of luxury houses. Then the city began. Slummy streets, homeless men in doorways. Cars, buses. A glimpse up a vertiginous side street. Big Victorian mansions. Up and down hills, unexpected glimpses of the sea. A skyscraper like a skinny pyramid or a needle pointing towards the sky. Pocket-handkerchief parks. Apartment blocks next to tiny wooden houses like something out of a fairy tale. Corner grocery stores – Italian, Indian, Korean. A stretch of main road where suddenly everything was Chinese: the street signs, the names on the shops. Shop windows full of embroidered silk slippers and bright red chicken carcasses. And, everywhere, hills. A switchback ride. The sun low in the sky, glinting off the sea and off windows. A city of beautiful, brief peep-show views.
Joanna's home was a picture-book Victorian wooden house painted blue and white, with steps up from the street, a wooden porch wrapped around one side, a profusion of bay windows and a turret with what I learned was called a widow's walk – a high circular balcony with a wonderful view of the city. Everywhere the house was decorated: intricate lacy woodcarvings edging windows, balconies and the porch. The minibus driver hauled my case out of the back of the bus and set it down on the pavement next to me. I stared up at the house for a few moments, taking it all in. Then I lugged my suitcase up to the big square porch and rang the doorbell.
Joanna stood there, cigarette in hand. She didn't smile, she didn't hug me, she didn't ask me about my journey. She looked at me and her expression said it all: annoyance, disappointment, regret. She didn't want me there. She wished she'd never invited me. She'd invited a passionate actress, a blossom in an appalling frock. And when I arrived at her doorstep she realised she'd got a scared eighteen-year-old small-town girl in cheap tarty clothes from Top Shop.
Joanna's house was full of things: pottery and paintings, stained-glass hangings, bits of tapestry and embroidery on the walls. My room was in the attic, an airy, sloped roof room with a double bed that took up almost all the floor space and with my own little bathroom tucked under the eaves. Next to my bed was an elaborate Victorian planter containing a nearly dead dusty ivy.
The heart of the house was the kitchen, a huge room in the basement, four floors down from my room. Joanna held court there, and in the evenings people came round for dinner and there was wine. There was also conversation that flew over my head. Sometimes a young man would appear, some guy in his late teens or early twenties, perhaps; often the son of someone else sitting around the table. 'Elliot's studying at Berkeley,' or 'Jonas is a very talented photographer,' Joanna would tell me; and always she would introduce me in a way that was difficult to live up to. 'Lizzie's a very promising actress,' or 'Lizzie is a budding writer.'
Was I? Had I given her any reason to think these things? Or was she just trying to make herself feel better about having a very ordinary teenage girl as her house guest for the summer? I would have to spend the evening talking to some skinny, intense guy who would later ask me out, as if it were his duty. And the next day I would meet him for lunch or coffee or to tour an art gallery or a museum, and we would stumble through an awkward conversation before saying goodbye, both of us apparently relieved that the ordeal was over.
Joanna was trying to find me a boyfriend (the generous interpretation) or was trying to find someone to take me off her hands. Having a guest is a chore, I'm sure of it. It's like a ghost in your house who keeps popping up when you least expect it. I tried to be self-sufficient, setting off every morning with my public-transport map and my guidebook, staying out all day sightseeing, or even just sitting in cafes with a book. But every evening there I was, back in her house, back in her kitchen, back in front of her and needing to be fed and talked to and dealt with.
I tell you all this so that you can understand why I assumed that Joanna intended Rivers Carillo for me on that first morning she introduced us. He smiled at me. I blushed. Joanna frowned. He winked, and my heart was his.
'Where are you going today?' Joanna asked me that morning.
'Alcatraz.'
'You'll have such fun,' said Rivers Carillo, winking at me again.
An hour later I was down at the waterfront. My boat trip to Alcatraz didn't leave for another half an hour, so I was killing time watching the sea lions. I wonder if they're still there. I guess they are – one of the most popular free attractions in the city. A colony of sea lions, assembled on wooden pontoons just off the pier. Huge, sleek, dark brown creatures, so fluid in their movements that you'd think they didn't have bones. They would sun themselves and then, bored, restless or hungry, plop down into the water and another sea lion would take their place. Fights would break out – spats over a female, or a prime place on a pontoon – and the fight would end with one of the animals sliding into the water with barely a splash before finding another pontoon to rest on. It was difficult not to anthropomorphise them, to give each one a character and motives. I was riveted. I felt I could have watched them all day.
There was a lot of jostling for position, not just among the sea lions but among the humans watching them. People pushed and shoved to get to the front, to find the best place to take pictures from. So when I felt a hand on my shoulder I didn't think much of it. I assumed it was just someone pushing me out of the way. The blowing in my ear? That was a different matter. I turned, angrily, and came face to face with a pair of dark, laughing eyes. Rivers Carillo.
'I was wondering if I'd find you here,' he said. 'I thought you might want some company on your day out.'
Alcatraz was awesome – literally, awesome. It was forbidding and also beautiful: a cluster of dilapidated buildings on a craggy island in the middle of a glistening blue sea with matchless views of the San Francisco skyline, which seemed almost close enough to touch. Wild flowers grew out of the crannies in the rocks and mortar. It was ruggedly be
autiful, and I was there with a ruggedly attractive man.
There was a particular prison cell at Alcatraz in the corner of the jail building that was nearest the city. They told us that on New Year's Eve prisoners in that cell could hear the parties on the mainland, the fireworks and the horns sounding on all the boats out in the harbour. I shuddered when they told us that. I squinted through the tiny outside window in the cell wall and tried to trace the well-known skyline. I felt a hand in the small of my back and then Rivers Carillo was nestling next to me, trying to peer out of the same small window. I felt his stubble rub against my cheek. His hand stayed on my back, and then it moved – I'm sure it did – to rest on my bottom. It stayed there for a while. I did nothing to stop it. In fact, I may have encouraged him with a flirty wiggle. He grinned at me; I grinned back. We were co-conspirators in jail together.
There was another cell that they allowed you in and then shut the door on you, with a loud clang. The cell was dark and crowded, and I was standing very close to Rivers, so close that I could feel his forearm touching mine. I leaned in a little closer and I think he did too. Perhaps he was standing a little too close to me for propriety, but I didn't care. I felt his hand touch my hip, but maybe it was just for comfort. It was scary, dark and claustrophobic in that cell.
Later, we sat in the sunshine on the wall that overlooks the drop down to the ocean and the skyline of San Francisco. He asked me questions about myself: where I lived, what books I liked, what music I listened to. He asked me about my acting, my family, my plans for the future. I tried to play the part of world-weary, cynical, seen-it-all young adult in my replies, but I probably just came across as a callow teenager.
Whatever. We were definitely flirting. He flirted with me and I flirted back. He recited a poem; I said I liked it and asked him who wrote it. He told me that he had. I knew I should be asking him more questions about himself but I didn't. Instead I let him ask me stuff and I tried to sound as interesting as possible with my responses. I was sure he liked me for my mind.
He took a photo of me, San Francisco in the background. Then one of the other tourists offered to take a picture of the two of us together and we moved apart slightly. I felt Rivers stiffen. 'No. No, thanks. It's okay,' he said. 'We're not together.'
On the ferry on the way back to San Francisco he said, 'That might have taken some explaining to your parents – a photo of you looking cosy with a middle-aged stranger.'
'You're not a stranger,' I said.
He looked at me, shook his head and laughed. 'Wrong response. You were supposed to say, "You're not middle aged."'
I looked at him. He was grinning.
'How old are you, anyway?' I asked.
'Thirty-eight. Does that seem really old to you?'
I shook my head, firmly. I was surprised, but determined not to show it. He was twenty years older than me. More than twice my age. I smiled to myself. There was something magical about that figure. Twenty years older: he was Mr Rochester or Maxim de Winter. Rivers Carillo was the perfect age for me.
Twelve
An eighteen-year-old girl in charge of her own sexuality is at least as dangerous as an eighteen-year-old boy in charge of his own car. She might even be more dangerous, because there's no test that you have to pass, no theory, no practical. One minute you're at school dreaming of pop stars and T V actors and romantic heroes in novels; the next minute you're out there, all tits and legs, tarted up and made up and ready to go.
I knew what love was. I'd read about it in books and seen it in films. I knew it made your heart beat faster and your eyes glow, and it made you feel alive. Love made stuff like eating and sleeping seem mundane and unnecessary. I knew so much about love that I'd ended things with my home-town boyfriend a couple of months earlier because he made me feel none of those things. I'd watched my sister Sarah with her fiance Chris and I'd shaken my head sadly, full of teenage wisdom and understanding, when I'd decided that they couldn't possibly be in love because Sarah was so calm about her forthcoming wedding.
I was a deep and passionate person, and I was destined to fall in love deeply and passionately with a deep and passionate man.
Or I was an annoying, naive, pretentious teenager destined to have her heart broken into tiny pieces.
I thought that Rivers Carillo was the hero of a romantic novel: the dark, mysterious older man brought back to life by the young innocent girl with hidden depths. He was Rochester, enchanted by the ethereal, pixie-like Jane Eyre. He was Maxim de Winter, all gruff and forbidding, proposing abruptly over breakfast to the poor, plain, nameless heroine.
In fact, as it turned out, Rivers was another character from romantic fiction: the married seducer who preys on innocent girls. I know that now; I didn't then.
I was in love with Rivers Carillo, I'm pretty sure that I was. I counted the days, hours and minutes since I'd seen him, or until I'd see him again. He would turn up for dinner at Joanna's sometimes, and we would pretend that we barely knew each other. His foot would find mine under the table, or he'd wink at me, or he'd grab hold of me in the hallway as he left and whisper instructions on where we should meet the next day. It was always somewhere public: the food court in the basement at Macy's on Union Square, the lobby of the St Francis Hotel, the cable-car turnaround at Powell and Market Streets – places where I might find myself anyway, places where two people might accidentally bump into each other.
He took me sightseeing. One day he showed me around Chinatown, and took me into shops that I would have been too shy to enter on my own. He showed me the strange foodstuffs – the bright red chickens, the birds' nests, the eggs boiled in tea – and he struck up conversations in pidgin Chinese/American with old, toothless men behind the shop counters. I admired the silk slippers and shoes and purses, running my fingers over the gold embroidery of lions and dragons and flowers. There was a pair of green slippers I particularly loved. 'Those would really suit you,' said Rivers, suddenly close to me and talking right into my ear, his stubble against my cheek. I thought he was about to offer to buy them for me but he didn't.
Another day we 'bumped into each other' on the steps of Grace Cathedral, a huge Gothic-style church on top of one of the highest hills in the city. Just outside the cathedral there was what looked like a maze, paved into the stonework on the ground. It wasn't a maze, though, strictly speaking; it was a labyrinth, a path to follow that took you inexorably from the edge to the centre, supposedly to represent one's twisting spiritual path through life. I was enchanted by it. Rivers sat down on a low stone wall nearby, so I left my bag there with him and started walking through the labyrinth. Around and around, doubling back on myself, I twisted my way along the path, feeling the exhilaration of being at the very crest of one of the highest hills in San Francisco. It was a bright, sunny, breezy day and I was very happy. I finished the labyrinth. I reached the centre. I gestured across to Rivers, my fists in the air in triumph. But he wasn't there. My bag was, sitting all alone by that stone wall, but he had gone.
I picked up my bag, checked that my purse was still there, and stood for a while, trying to see where he'd gone. Eventually I spotted him, in the small park opposite the cathedral. I was about to run over but then I noticed he was talking to someone. A woman. The set of his body said he didn't want to be interrupted. I walked across to the park and sat on one of the swings. I kicked it higher and higher, all the while watching Rivers talking to that woman. And when she left, I brought the swing to a stop so suddenly that I scuffed the soles of my sandals. Rivers came and sat on the swing next to me. He smiled at me. He didn't say anything about the woman, and neither did I.
You see, I did know that something was strange, off, about our relationship. I did realise – at least subconsciously – that he didn't want anyone to know about us. I did notice that he never took me into restaurants, or introduced me to people. I was grateful for that later, of course; many times I've thought, 'Thank God no one ever saw us together.' Back then I was annoyed and offended, but I
figured it was just one of his funny ways. He didn't want people disapproving of us, or of the age difference between us.
'Joanna doesn't know about us, does she?' he asked me one day. And I was proud of myself for keeping the whole thing a secret. I knew my sister's godmother wouldn't approve of my relationship with a man who was twenty years older. But I hadn't realised why she would be extra disapproving about my relationship with this particular older man.
There was one day that Rivers came back to Joanna's house with me. I forget why, exactly. I think I had bought something heavy, or maybe I had a blister or my shoes had broken. Whatever it was, I remember being a bit whiny, so Rivers hailed a taxi and then got in it with me. 'It's okay, Joanna's out all evening,' I said.
'I know,' he told me. He winked and squeezed my knee.
We got a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses from the kitchen and climbed the four flights of stairs to my little attic bedroom. Rivers put the glasses on the windowsill and poured the wine. I put a tape on, one by Wilson Phillips that I'd bought just a couple of days before. The summery sound of the music suited my mood. I grabbed my wineglass and sat down on the bed, acutely aware that it was the only place to sit.
Rivers looked around the room. He picked up the book lying next to the bed – Pride and Prejudice – and flicked through a few pages. He rummaged through the pile of tapes by my stereo. He looked at the ivy in the pot and pulled off a few leaves. 'This is dead,' he said. He stepped into my little bathroom and glanced around, fiddling with the bottles of lotion and the make-up on the shelf under the mirror. Finally he came and sat beside me on the bed. He kissed me on the lips, and his mouth tasted of the white wine we were drinking. I opened my mouth slightly and he kissed me again, this time taking my bottom lip between his lips. We each had a wineglass in one hand, and we were balancing our glasses as we kissed, trying not to spill the wine. I leaned towards him and tried to make him kiss me harder. But he pulled away from me. 'I know you want more,' he said, 'but that's all you're getting for now.'