You made a great big mess of love, Big Bill, but who didn’t?
Big Bill had forgotten short endings altogether. He’d found his voice, at last, and the more he used it, the better he seemed to feel. That’s the power of voices. I let his words wash over me, listened without listening, and thought about how the biggest truth in my life was a lie, but that didn’t make it any less real, especially not for Lulu, who’d been forced to live it all these years.
At some point I noticed Big Bill was slurring, and chutes and eddies began wending their way through his longer phrases, and his voice was starting to carry, but in a warm, gregarious kind of way, somewhere between the don’t-you-feel-good-about-7Up guy and Yogi Bear. And how do you not forgive that guy? It’s impossible not to forgive that guy. Finally, Big Bill wobbled to his feet and brushed off his ass. He took a deep breath and held it in, and when he let it out, he seemed to watch it rise invisibly into the ether.
“Good talk,” he said. “Good talk.”
With that he stumbled off toward the tree line, presumably to take a leak. About halfway there he lost his footing on the sloping grass and fell on his ass. He laughed as he bumbled to his feet, and I heard keys and change rattling in his sweatpants pockets. Resuming his journey, he began to sing, at least I think it was singing. After a minute or so, I’m pretty sure he fell into the bushes, because I heard him thrashing around in the brush and then the don’t-you-feel-good-about-7Up-guy laugh.
Upon returning from his adventure, Big Bill took one last epic pull on the Carlo Rossi, managed to swallow most of it, smacked his lips, and looked thoughtful.
“You know,” he said, wiping his mouth with a bare wrist. “It’s funny the distance between looking forward and looking back.”
That was his closer. I’m not sure what all he meant by it, but it must have been a good summation as far as he was concerned, because it was the last thing he said. He lay on his back with his arms behind his head and looked up at the sky. He had a smile on his face. There were twigs in his hair. He was humming under his breath. Thank God he didn’t have a guitar.
My mind sought corners for refuge. I sat there beside him for a while, percolating, knowing I was poised on the edge of decisive action, but not rushing it.
Eventually Big Bill stopped humming, and within fifteen minutes he started mumbling inaudibly. Soon he was snoring in apneic fits. Looking down on him, I forgave him all over again. He seemed kind of childlike there in the grass. He had a red ring around his mouth from the Carlo Rossi jug. His Ray Conniff bangs were pasted crookedly to his forehead. I had to forgive him, because the truth is, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Without the lie, the whole balance might have been disrupted. Lulu might never have been Lulu, I might never have been Will, and without all that pain, all the grunting, gas-inducing anguish of love and loss, what was left to gain?
It was a little nippy on the hill. If I’d had a coat, I would’ve covered Big Bill with it. But I didn’t have a coat. Besides, with all that rippling girth, he had to be warm. If I’d had a pen and paper, I might have left a note. Or if I’d had anything smaller than a twenty, I might have left him some extra cash. But I didn’t have any of that, and who was I kidding, anyway? Of course Big Bill would be okay. He’d navigated himself that far, he’d find his way back to Sausalito. He might get a little cold, but nobody would fuck with him. Who was gonna fuck with the Incredible Hulk, even if he was sleeping? I did what I had to, and I’d do it again. I fished the keys from the pocket of Big Bill’s sweats and left him sprawled in the grass on Hippie Hill in the middle of the night. I could hear him snoring halfway to Stanyan. I’ll bet he had good dreams that night.
Ch-ch-ch-changes
This time I didn’t knock. I stole quietly through the unlocked door. Lulu was asleep on the hide-a-bed in the living room, bathed in the flickering blue light of the muted television. I kneeled beside her and watched the rise and fall of her breathing. I reached out to touch her hair when suddenly her eyes popped open.
“Shhh,” I said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Shhh.”
She sat up on her elbows. “You’re drunk.”
“Not so much. Shhh.”
But it was too late. Footsteps padded down the stairs. The light in the foyer snapped on. Willow walked in. She was in a robe, still in the process of wrapping it about herself.
“William, what on earth—where’s your father? What are you doing here at this hour?”
“It’s okay, Mom,” said Lulu. “Go.”
Poor Willow looked helpless and bewildered standing there in her bathrobe. “But what—where’s your—William, I—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Everything’s okay.”
“But, darling, I—”
“Mom,” said Lulu. “Go. Please.”
Willow retreated, but not without hesitation, through the foyer and up the stairs.
I never took my eyes off Lulu. I kneeled there watching her glow in the blue light. I was looking for changes, looking to see her as though for the first time in my life, expecting something or somebody new to be revealed in her place. I’m sad to report that Lulu was just as beautiful as ever, and that underneath her nightgown sleeves her scars were beautiful, too. These things I know to be true, because I longed for Lulu Trudeau, Lulu Miller, as achingly as ever. And the force that drew me toward Lulu, whatever you chose to call it, was the same force that moved planets.
“He told you,” she said groggily.
“Yeah.”
She searched me for answers. “Everything?”
“More than enough. Why didn’t you just tell me, Lu—about the baby—about all of it? Why did you let me torture you?”
She turned her face away so that I could see the little raised half circle on her cheekbone, faded pink and smooth with age. “I didn’t want you to have to lose what I lost,” she said. “Believe me, Will, it was better not to have known.”
“Either way, I lost you, Lu.”
“But you never lost hope.”
“I never had any,” I said.
Lulu cast her eyes down and faced the blue glow of the television screen. She looked so sad and beautiful with that light on her face that I couldn’t help but reach out and touch her. I ran my thumb gently across her scarred cheek, and I swept the dark hair out of her face so I could look down into those bottomless blue eyes—the only other eyes through which I ever saw the world.
“So now you see,” she said.
I cast my own eyes down, and they were burning. I closed them and they burned a hole straight to my heart. “Yes,” I said. “Now I see.”
And what I saw on the back of my burning eyelids was a future stretching out before me, and Lulu wasn’t in it, and quite suddenly the future seemed vaster than ever before.
P.S.
And what about now? After all of this talk about the future and the past, what can I tell you now, with the benefit of hindsight, that could possibly illuminate anything? What can I tell you about the nature of love, the thickness of blood, or the delicate shades of truth? I could tell you that my father hums to himself now as he walks around Sausalito in a sweat suit, with a shock of grey hair atop his narrowing shoulders. But what would that tell you? I could tell you that Willow treasures the cards I buy her on Mother’s Day each year, but then, she’s had those coming for a long time. I could tell you that Lulu is the mother of two children, and that one of them is named William, but that might be giving you the wrong idea. I could tell you that I’m very successful and very happy, but then I’d be lying about one of those things.
So which among all of these philosophies, among all of those platitudes, is the one kernel of truth that has left its signature on my life?
That we are all a mystery to each other at the end of the day?
That you should never assume the conformity of the f
uture with the past?
That despair does not know it is despair?
That the world is your idea?
Sorry, but I’ve got to go with the meatheads on this one:
No pain, no gain.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my patient, loving, and endlessly supportive wife, Lauren; my friends and tireless advocates, Mollie Glick and Jessica Regal; my wise and witty editor, Richard Nash, along with everybody at Soft Skull, top to bottom; my entire family (whom I love very much and to whom I apologize for any small similarities to the Miller clan); my friend and trusty reader, Michael Meachen; some of my favorite writers, who consented to reading my little opus and even went further in praising it: Keith Dixon, Brad Listi, Adam Langer, Josh Emmons, Greg Downs, and Natalia Rachel Singer; my writers’ group (Carol, Dennis, Suzanne) for supporting and believing in me; my old friend and fountain of book knowledge, Jan Healy (and everybody at Eagle Harbor Books); my friend and editing mentor, Mary Ribeski, at University of Washington Press; Harriet Wasserman for always reminding me that the word comes first; my best friend, Tup; Carl and Lydia, Matt Comito, Paul Miller at Crossroads Films, Roxy Aliaga at Counterpoint, Bryan Tomasovich and all my friends and kindred spirits in the fiction files (you know who you are!).
All About Lulu Page 29