by Robin Page
They all leave after paying the bill. She and Maud laugh about Erica as they walk to their cars together. It is gentle gossip.
“You going to tennis tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Jocelyn says. “I’m officially addicted.”
“We all are,” Maud says. “How about the retreat? I’m thinking about it. Scott says he’ll watch the kids.”
“I don’t know,” Jocelyn says. “Palm Desert is so hot, and I hate leaving Lucy. Also, I can’t share a room. I just can’t.”
“Nobody’s asking you to share a room,” Maud says. “I mean, except Missy. I heard Missy is dying to stay with you. You’re her favorite person.”
“She’s going?”
“Oh, come on, Jocelyn. Stop being a child. Missy is still the official Kate stalker. Of course she’s going. No excuses though. She isn’t going to bother you, and you don’t have to share a room. We’re adult women. We’re beyond room sharing. Besides, I might have to take home one of those tennis cabana boys.”
Maud is joking, but Kate crosses Jocelyn’s mind. Could they have a night together? Is there room for privacy? In a flash, she imagines waking up next to her, a whole night spent.
“If Conrad will come up Saturday, maybe. Lucy still has bad dreams sometimes. Three nights is too long.”
Maud sighs. “Oh, leave your poor daughter and husband alone. Let them have a weekend together. You never give yourself a break. That’s why you get so crazy and worried. Let them be a bit by themselves.”
“I don’t think it will work. I mean, Lucy, she’ll want me.”
Maud sounds disgusted. “You should have had more kids, Jocelyn. You’d flee from them as I do if you had five of them. They’re animals. Don’t you see that?”
Jocelyn smiles and shrugs her shoulders at Maud.
Maud continues, “Think about it, okay. We’d have fun. We’ll ask Kate to keep us together. I don’t mean in the room. I mean for the drills.”
“Maybe,” she says.
“I’ll tell Scott to come up with Conrad. How’s that? I know some of the girls are bringing their nannies.”
“That might work,” Jocelyn says.
“Oh my God,” Maud says. “I just went insane for a minute. Those heathens are not following me up to Palm Desert to ruin my girls’ weekend.”
The two women laugh. Jocelyn knows how much Maud loves her children. She knows that they are always first in everything she does. She sometimes watches Maud manage it all, wonders how, and wants to be like her. If Ycidra were alive, Jocelyn thinks, she would want her to be like Maud—a good life, a good husband, lots of money and children. The loss of her sister pricks at her like a tiny pinpoint.
“I’ll let you know,” Jocelyn says and hugs her friend. “Either way, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
3
ON THE CURVY DRIVE HOME FROM THE RESTAURANT, JOCELYN TRIES NOT to remember. She tries not to let the voices in. But something in the dinner, in the conversation, in the sisterly feel of her friendship with Maud, has made her lose control, has let the past eat the present.
Find the box, she thinks, feeling the panic rising as she drives the car toward home. She has had a good night. She does not want it ruined. Palm trees sway and move as if alive in the windy night. Find the box, she says again. Put the past inside.
She knows from her history that she needs to get a handle on it right away. There is urgency in the touch of the gas pedal. The car goes faster. She blinks against the pictures that come to her. PCH winds and winds. She is a little bit tipsy after drinking her vodka so fast. Lights streak by. Close the box after. Close the box. And then a lock. With a chain? She tries to remember what Dr. Bruce told her. She tries to see each link, the combination numbers. She tries, but it doesn’t work. She focuses on the road, the hills beside her. A fun tennis match watched with a friend. She rolls the windows down. A rock then, something to beat it down with. Level it. If she can just get home. If she can just make it up to her floor.
She imagines an animal, ravenous, a wolf. Yes. An animal to eat it. Some weighty, growling thing. Then there is Ycidra. Uncle Al. William. Lucy. Mr. Baird. But what did I do wrong? Then, Gladys, You know what you did wrong. Her confusion. No. No. And no.
As a child, it was a television set inside her head, many stations, the noise of it, running on top of all that other noise. The noise in the bed above. The noise of her siblings being whipped. She would blink to change the channel. The sheets that were never washed had the smell of her own fear in them. She tries now, but time has left her unpracticed. A cave, she thinks, a rock rolled in front of it. She rolls the windows down even farther, but nothing helps. The sea crashing against rock makes her afraid.
4
IN THE ELEVATOR UP TO HER PENTHOUSE, THIS IS WHAT SHE HEARS:
I will feed you when your mother will not.
I will pay the gas bill, so you won’t be cold.
I will be your mother’s boyfriend.
I am your friend’s father.
I will keep your mother high.
I will forget your sleeping bag. You will shiver in the cold, before you finally get inside mine with me.
I will check your naked body for mosquito bites. Not just you, but Ycidra, and William, and all the other children, one after another, in a line. This is what you will remember about Camp Christian. This is what God will give you. But I will linger on you, because there is no one for you, no one to protect you. Just the cold plastic of a Hefty bag.
I will put a pillow over your head so you can’t breathe or scream, even when you are beyond the noise. Even when you no longer believe in protesting.
I will touch you like I touch your mother.
I will rape your sister. You will know better than to tell. I will spend most of your childhood teaching you that lesson. Shame will make you behave.
5
SIMON’S DOOR OPENS AS THE ELEVATOR DOORS OPEN. HE MUST HEAR IT. Tears warm on her cheeks. A dizzy feeling. He is expecting her, of course—the men’s finals, the tennis. All of it suffocated under. She is too disoriented to care what he thinks, to figure out what brings it on. Why can she never control the hurt?
He walks toward her. His face strains. What is it? his eyes ask. “What has happened?” his voice says. He grasps both of her arms gently, walks her back to his door, leads her in through the entry, past the marble island, and then sits her down on his couch. A blanket around her legs. Her high heels in his hands and then on the ground. Within minutes, he places a glass of warm brandy into her hands. She cries and cries. He sits beside her. Quiet. Facing forward. No words. The tennis is on but muted in the background. Large brown hands hold her own. Hands like William’s, strong, slender. My brother was a pianist. I used to turn the pages for him when he played. A short nod of his head, a signal between us.
“I miss my brother,” she says to him. “I miss my sister. They are both dead.”
“I didn’t know,” he says. “My brothers are dead. My sisters are dead too. My whole family. So many families.”
Snot runs down from her nose. He gets her a tissue. She wipes her eyes, her nose. They sit, in no hurry, for what feels like a long time.
Chapter Eighteen
Simon
1
BEFORE SHE GOES, WHEN SHE’S FINALLY CALM, WHEN SHE HAS WASHED HER face, and fixed her hair, he hands her the letter. It is a commitment that he is making to her. The sharing of blood in order to make them blood siblings, a cut to the palm, a shake. It is important, he knows—the only way to avoid certain regret in the morning. He must equalize the relationship. He must make it so that they are both absolutely vulnerable, absolutely naked in front of one another.
She unfolds it. She is careful. It is as fragile and important as a rare museum piece. She handles it as if it might disintegrate in her hands. He lays the pictures out too—the grainy, blurred bits of them. She looks at them. She reads the letter. When she is finished, she speaks.
“She is your daughter,” she says to him. “I
can feel it. I just know.”
“Do you really think so?” he says.
“Yes,” she says. “I really do.”
He puts her shoes back on for her when she is ready. He steadies her. He opens the door for her. He watches her as she makes it safely to her own door.
Part III
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
—WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Chapter Nineteen
Jocelyn
1
THE IDEA OF A CABIN IN THE WOODS CLAIMS HER IN THE SAME WAY THAT Kate does. The Palisades Inn is expensive, staid. They worry about maids and other patrons hearing. It’s too close to the club. Intrusion is just outside the door. She can’t stop thinking about an imaginary place to be. Our own space, she whispers to herself. It must be completely separate. No one will know.
On Wednesday, after she drops Lucy at school, she heads north on Pacific Coast Highway, past her condominium, and then right onto Topanga Canyon Boulevard. The town is less than fifteen minutes from the club. The road is dangerous, something to slip off of in a light rain. There are no guardrails. There is just nature, mountains, and sky for quite a long time, and then suddenly, a sign that says SLOW DOWN THROUGH TOWN.
Town is a lumber store, a grocery store, a liquor store, and a specialty store with oversize Buddhas and hippie-wear. There is a post office, a feed store selling baby chicks, and a real estate office, tiny, not even the size of a small shed. She passes it, heading into the Valley, and then changes her mind, makes a difficult U-turn, and heads back, parks in its parking lot.
She steps out of her car. It is actually cold here, much colder even than by the beach. She knocks on the real estate office door. A man invites her in, tells her his name is Walt, offers tea, yerba maté. He hands her a blanket.
“Fourteen microclimates here in Topanga,” he says to her, as if she’s asked. “You’re in the coldest one.”
The office, he explains, is an old forest ranger’s cabin that was built in 1907. Jocelyn takes a seat, puts the blanket on her lap. She likes the smell of the wool. She watches as the Realtor starts a fire in an old-fashioned stove. A dog is asleep on a dog bed in the corner of the room. It is a standard poodle—a show dog with ribbons on each ear and a pom-pom shaved into its tail. Not at all what Jocelyn would have expected in a cabin like this. When he lights the flame of the stove, the dog makes its way closer to the fire.
“She thinks I’m making it for her,” the Realtor says. He rubs her black muzzle. “I am, in a way.”
Jocelyn likes the dog. She’s heard the breed is smart.
“What can I do for you?” he asks. “On this fine, fine, cold morning.”
She smiles, sips the tea. It tastes awful. “I’m not sure,” she says. “I just had this idea. I’ve always loved it here. I need a retreat.”
She doesn’t want to say, I need a place to tie my girlfriend up. I need a place where no one knows me, where we can do things to each other and not worry about the noise.
“Big?” he says.
“Just for me, really.”
“I’ve got a few larger ones, but only one studio,” he says, “It’s very original. It takes a certain kind of person.”
She likes the sound of that. She pretends she likes the awful tea.
“It’s got eighty steps, which are okay on the way down the mountain. But on the way up—” he smiles “—that’s the bastard.” He digs around in the desk. Pulls out a flyer.
She takes it from him, sees the photograph, feels as if it’s something precious in her hands.
“It’s small,” he says. “Not even five hundred square feet. All one room, but the rent’s good. No heat, just a wood-burning stove like this one, but you can imagine.”
She is already feeling the heat in this room. The cottage would be three-quarters this size.
“It’s inexpensive and on one acre. Forgive me,” he says, looking at her bag and her boots and her coat. “I’ve got better things. Larger. Less rustic. I mean, you don’t seem the type for this one. I hope that’s not offensive. You don’t seem like you’ve done much camping, and this isn’t much better than camping.”
She smiles. Looks at the dog again. “I want something rustic,” she says. “Something different than what I’m used to.” She resists the urge to tell him where she lives.
“Well then,” he says. He writes something on a Post-it note. “Here’s the owner’s information. It’s five hundred a month. It’s month to month.”
“I’d want to pay cash,” Jocelyn says, knowing this is just a portion of her shopping money. Conrad will never notice.
“Last time I looked, that would be up about everyone’s alley,” the Realtor says. “Still, you’ll have to get in touch with the owner, Lois.”
“Great,” she says, looking at the flyer again, feeling drawn already to the place, as if it were already hers.
He presses the Post-it with the owner’s information into her hand. “It’s what we call Topanga funky, and Lois is a bit, well, different, but so’s everyone around here. I sure hope you’ll fit in.” He says it kindly with a bit of laughter at the end.
“Thanks very much.”
“Are you going to call her right now?” he asks. “She’s always home. She’ll show it to you right away. It’s just that . . .”
He looks at her boots, the soft suede of them, the fine Italian leather. They are flat, but fragile.
“I’d change your shoes,” he says. “Before I’d go out there. We’ve had rain here recently. Sometimes it just rains here, and nowhere else in LA. Like I said, fourteen microclimates. Because we’re in a canyon. The mud stays for days.”
“I will,” she says, standing up. “Is there a place nearby where I could buy something?”
“I don’t think for shoes,” he says. “I could give you a couple of plastic bags.”
She laughs, imagining herself plodding through thick mud with her Chloé boots wrapped in grocery bags.
“Sounds good,” she says, and he reaches in a drawer and hands her two plastic bags and two zip ties.
“Well.” He offers his hand. “Welcome,” he says. “It’s kind of a live-and-let-live community.”
Jocelyn gets her keys out of her purse, shakes the man’s hand. She smiles. “That’s exactly what I’m looking for.”
She leaves the real estate office and goes to the little market. She is excited, shrieky, like a girl who’s gotten her first kiss. There is a butcher in the back. She buys sausages and steak fillets to grill at home. The butcher sells her an insulated bag. She orders a cup of coffee and sits outside in what is almost a parking lot and looks at the ads posted on the wall—healing is offered, chakra readings, animals that need shelter. She likes that she doesn’t know anyone in the canyon. She is fearless and anonymous. She is making it happen—a whole other existence. She watches a couple kissing. A horse is being ridden down the main street. There is a man coming out of a handmade tile store with a blue macaw on his shoulder. It’s like being transported to another time. It wouldn’t be weird, she thinks, if someone walked down the street naked. She sits, picturing herself in the cabin. She imagines clean, bare space, hardly any furniture. No past. It’s just for me, she thinks. For me and Kate, her brain reminds her.
2
SHE CALLS FROM HER CELL PHONE, NOT WANTING TO LEAVE THE CANYON without leasing the cottage. The landlady confirms that there is just one big room and a minikitchen and full bath. She reiterates that there really are eighty stairs. She explains that the cottage’s share of the property is one acre.
“I live on the other side of the creek. It’s a long walk for me. I want a single person. I hope Walt told you that,” she says.
“It’s me. Just me.”
“Okay then,” the landlady says.
“I w
ouldn’t use it full time,” Jocelyn says. “I’m looking for a retreat.”
“Even better,” Lois says. “Are you an artist?”
“Yes,” Jocelyn says. The lie comes easily. It makes her happy.
Lois says, “I’m going to warn you now. No point moving in if you aren’t up for it. The stairs are a bit of an issue. I mean you have to be in good shape. No drugs either. I mean a little pot never hurt anybody, but I don’t want drugs on my property.”
Jocelyn cracks up. “I’m in good shape. I don’t mind stairs. No drugs.”
“It’s very remote, and not for everyone. You can’t be calling me because you see a snake. Remote is actually a bit of an understatement. This is in nature. On septic.”
“When can I see it?” Jocelyn asks, cutting to the chase. She looks at her watch. It is Kate’s late day. Will she be able to see the place, shower, change, tell Kate? Two hours before drill. She wants to surprise her. Have her come and see.
“I’ll make a point of meeting you. I already sort of like you.”
“Thank you,” Jocelyn says. “Thank you so much.”
“How’s eleven thirty?”
Fifteen minutes from now, Jocelyn thinks. Maybe she can lease it quickly, get the keys. She has cash in her purse. The universe is on her side. “That’s great.”
“It’s up Grandview Road,” Lois says. “And then down a private drive. I will text you the directions. Your GPS won’t pick it up, so make sure you write it all down right now before you get out of town.”
Town? Jocelyn thinks again, wryly. She sits, staring at the phone. She waits.
SHE IS HAPPY SHE HAS DRIVEN THE PORSCHE. IT DOES BETTER ON THE windy roads, and she thinks it might be more impressive. The road is narrow and dangerous. There are blind curves around every corner. She is glad to have the control.
She parks her car between white lines on what seems to be the crest of a huge hill. She waits, worries that she is in the wrong place, but the text says to park by the flying pig mailbox, and there is a mailbox in the shape of a flying pig. She waits and waits, feeling tense, worrying that the landlady has changed her mind. What if someone else has rented it? What if—