Fault Lines

by Anne Rivers Siddons

  Curtis whined from the backseat and T.C. reached back and opened the door. “You still want him?” he called out to Glynn, standing rigidly by the lodge door with her back to us.

  “Yes,” she said in a low voice, and T.C. said, “Go, Curtis. Carpe diem.”

  Curtis took off out of the backseat like a heat-seeking missile and flew to Glynn, jumping up and down beside her, licking her knees and her hands. She knelt and put her arms around him and stayed there, motionless.

  “Shall I bring him when I come?” I said.

  “Whatever, he’ll let you know what he wants to do. If he wants to stay with her, let him. Merritt—”

  “I’ll see you in a little while,” I said, and closed the door and crossed the lawn to where the girl and the dog were.

  We went inside in silence, and Glynn vanished into her room, Curtis loping beside her grinning his red-tongued grin. She closed the door with a small, ugly slam, and I opened it and went into her room.

  I stood with my back against the door, arms crossed over my breasts as if to ward off blows.

  “I think we’d better talk about this,” I said tightly. “I think you better tell me what’s gotten into you. The way you’re behaving is not acceptable.”

  She was lying on her back, her arms around Curtis, who had flopped on her bed with her. She sat up abruptly.

  “Oh, really,” she said furiously. “Oh, well, excuse me, Emily Post. By all means, tell me from your vast store of acceptability just what it is that you’ll accept from me.”

  “Glynn, what is it? Is it because you were having such a good time and you don’t want to leave? Are you worried about your father? Do you think he’s going to jump all over you about your hair and the nose ring and all? Because I promise you, I won’t let him do that. How you look is your business; you’re sixteen years old now—”

  “You’re goddamn right I am! And I’m old enough to decide for myself where I’m going to be, and I’m not going home! I’m not! I’m going to stay out here; they’re holding the Joan part for me, and I’m going to do it, and you can’t stop me—”

  “You know you cannot do that movie. You know we agreed on that. I told you that from the beginning; you said you understood that—”

  “But that was before we knew for sure they were going to do it! And they are, and they want me, and we’ve already made plans for it; I’ve already told Mr. Margolies I could stay; he’s sent me some early scripts, and all kinds of presents, and flowers every day. It’s going to happen! You can’t stop it! I’ve told everybody!”

  My head felt as light as if I were about to faint, and my pulse raced in my wrists so hard that I could feel it out to the ends of my fingers.

  “It’s not going to happen and I can stop it, so fast it will make your silly yellow head swim,” I said through a red mist of rage. “What on earth has happened to you in just three days? Have you completely lost your mind? How did Margolies know where to get in touch with you? What kind of presents?”

  “Aunt Laura told him!” she screamed at me. “Aunt Laura told Caleb, and Caleb told Mr. Margolies, and they’ve both been in touch with me, and it’s a done deal, and we start shooting in September, and if you try to stop me I’ll run away. I’ll starve myself. I swear to God I will.”

  Oh God, Laura, I thought in dull grief and defeat. You just aren’t capable of not wrecking things for me, are you?

  “Where is Laura?” I said tiredly. “I haven’t been able to get her anywhere, not at her place, not at Stuart’s.…You’d better tell me. I need to talk to her. If you don’t, I’m going to call Margolies this minute and tell him the deal’s off. And it is off, kiddo. We’re on that noon plane home tomorrow whether or not I’ve talked to your precious aunt. Don’t think that’s not going to happen.”

  “I don’t know where she is,” Glynn said sulkily, dropping her awful, spiky lashes. “I can’t get her, either, and now nobody else knows where she is. I can’t get Caleb, either, and Mr. Margolies isn’t at his number…”

  She looked back up at me, and there was a kind of wild radiance in her painted face.

  “Listen, Mom,” she said. “You know you can’t go home without knowing where Aunt Laura is. You know it would just…haunt you. You know how you are about taking care of her. Well, why don’t we go down to L.A., and you can find her from there? She’s bound to let somebody know eventually; Caleb, or Mr. Margolies; somebody. We can ask around, and you can talk to Mr. Margolies and Caleb, they’ll make you see how wonderful all this will be for me. I know they will. We can stay at Stuart’s; he’s not there—”

  “How do you know he’s not there?” I said.

  She dropped her eyes again.

  “He called me the other night,” she said. “He was going into the hospital, and he wanted to talk to you about Aunt Laura. He said he’d tried to call you up at T.C.’s, but nobody returned his message. I asked him and he said he’d be very pleased if we’d stay at his place and try to get ahold of Aunt Laura.”

  “Why didn’t you call me and tell me that?” I said slowly and clearly. “Why didn’t you, Glynn?”

  “I was afraid you’d make me go home, all right? I was afraid you’d find out something had happened to her and we couldn’t stay.”

  She was shouting, her eyes screwed shut with anger and desperation.

  “That was a very terrible thing you did,” I said evenly. “It was truly an awful thing. I hope you never realize how awful. What hospital is he in?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

  “And you didn’t ask?”

  “No! I didn’t ask! So what does that make me, a monster? Okay, then! I didn’t ask and I’m a monster!”

  “You’re not anybody I know,” I said softly, in misery.

  She came surging off the bed and ran up into my face.

  “Do you think I know who you are? You aren’t my mother; you aren’t that awful saintly shit who keeps telling me what the right thing to do is, who keeps falling all over me to keep me a baby, who always, always knows the good, kind, wise, saintly thing to do.”

  “I’ve never on earth tried to tell you what was right,” I whispered. “I’ve never told you how to live your life—”

  “No, but you’re always done the goddamn right thing! Always, always! You’ve always been oh, so dutiful and good and pure; you’ve always taken care of everybody; you’ve always showed me what to do even if you didn’t tell me! And I’ve always tried to do it, and it doesn’t work; it doesn’t get you anywhere; that fucking old woman still runs our house; I can’t take the one good thing somebody’s offered me that was all mine alone; you’re always there with goodness shining out of you—”

  “Glynn—”

  “I want you to get out of my head! I’m not you! I’m me! You’re not anybody anymore; you’re just some cat in heat who’s up here fucking the hired help.”

  “What the hell are you saying? How can you say such a thing?”

  “I can smell it on you!” she screamed, and began to cry, hard and loudly, like a child. “I could smell it on you when I got in the car! Do you think I’m a baby? You think I don’t know what come smells like?”

  She whirled and ran back to the bed and threw herself down onto it, her face buried in Curtis’s neck. She cried loudly. Curtis whined and nosed at her and licked her face. I put a hand out toward her, and then dropped it.

  “I’m going up and try to get hold of Aunt Laura one more time,” I said tonelessly. “And I’m going to make us a plane reservation. I’ll be back after a while. Try to sleep. We’ll see if we can start to sort all this out in the morning. I’m sorry you feel badly. I feel badly, too.”

  She did not answer, only lay there sobbing. I went out of her room and closed the door. I did not think that the part of me her words had hit would ever come alive again.

  “I will starve myself!” she screamed after me through the closed door. “Starting right now! At least you can’t stop me doing that!”

 
Then do it, I said, but not aloud. I can’t be your reason to live. You have to find that.

  I went out into the hot night and up the gravel path to T.C.

  Much later we sat upon the sofa on his veranda and looked at each other. We had not made love; we had wanted to, and started it, but then we had known that after all, we could not, and neither of us had pushed it.

  “Not after that business with Glynn,” he said. “I don’t want you remembering that when you remember how we were together. Remember the last time instead. Remember letting the stew burn, and you sitting on top of me, laughing like a hyena.”

  I had told him about the scene with Glynn. I kept nothing back. He’d listened without comment, and then said, “Poor you. Poor Glynn. You’ve started down that awful road of her growing up. I remember some of it from Katie, before I left. My grandmother used to call it starting up fool’s hill. I wish I could help you with it, but that’s for you and Pom to do.”

  He spoke freely and naturally of Pom. I knew that I could not have.

  We were holding each other tightly on the sofa. We had lain there together for what seemed a very long time, kissing very gently now and then, but mostly just holding each other. He had broken it off to try Laura for me, at the Palm Springs house and at Stuart Feinstein’s condo, but there was no answer anywhere, and I had no idea how to reach Caleb Pringle. T.C. had called the number Caleb had given him long ago first thing and gotten only an answering machine, and I knew that it was fruitless to try and reach Leonard Margolies. Finally he had called and made a reservation for Glynn and me on the Delta noon flight the next day. We had had to take first class; tourist was full.

  “Good,” he said. “Drink champagne. Eat steak. Stretch out and sleep. Soften the princess up with macadamia nuts and maybe get her a little drunk. And then tell her very firmly to shut up; she knows nothing about love. She’ll be lucky if she ever does. Don’t be a doormat for a spoiled mall punk. Don’t be a doormat for anybody.”

  “She’s not that.”

  “I know. I remember her when she first got here. But you mustn’t let her start that way. On the other hand, maybe you should. Maybe now’s the time to start letting her make her own mistakes. Do you think you could find it in you to let her do this movie? If you or somebody you trusted came along to look out for her? Maybe it would do her dad good to do that—”

  “No,” I said. “He couldn’t. He couldn’t if he wanted to. I see now that I have to let up, but I’m not prepared to let her go in harm’s way. I haven’t changed that much, T.C. I don’t think I ever will.”

  “No. That part of you won’t change,” he said.

  We lay there a while longer. The thin moon rode up the sky and diminished; it had risen a great orange crescent, apocalyptic and awful. I was glad when it shrank. The light it spilled down on us on the veranda sofa was thin and urine-pale, not the radiant cold silver it had been before. We were stuck together with perspiration, but neither of us moved.

  “I won’t see you again, will I?” I whispered at last, tasting the salt of his skin on my tongue, against his chest. “I mean, I know you’ll take us to the airport, but I mean…see you.”

  “You’ll see me,” he said. His voice was very low. “Whenever you see redwoods in the National Geographic, or fog, or watch Shamu on TV, you’ll be seeing me. Whenever you smell pine and spruce and day-old socks, that’s me. Whenever you hear wind in the tops of trees, that’s me, and whenever you taste crab and wine and Brie that’s me, and whenever the wind blows your hat off or you get under a cold shower, that’s me. Whenever you read about an earthquake, that’s me, sure as gun’s iron. Whenever you smell wet dog, that’s Curtis and me, and whenever you see a Rattus rattus, that’s Forrest, and I’m right behind him. Never see me again? You’ll never not see me. And I’ll never not see you. I’ve got you whole and real, just like you’ve been these last few days, in my brain and heart and the part of me you profess to want to make a life cast of. As long as I live, the Merritt of Merritt’s Creek does, too. Didn’t I say I’d always be your same stars? If you get to missing me, just look up.”

  “I can’t stand this,” I said. “I think I’ll never…T.C., how can you ever go to bed with anybody else again? I don’t think I ever can—”

  “Sure you can. It’s just the woman you leave up here that can’t. And that woman won’t, not ever with anybody else but me. Don’t worry about me, baby love. If it gets too bad I’ll just haul out my board with the bearskin—”

  “Don’t! I love you! I love you! I can’t leave you! There’s no way I can leave you.”

  “There’s no way you can stay,” he said, and stood up, pulling me up with him. He held me against him for a long moment, so hard that I could not breathe, did not want ever again to breathe.…

  He stood back and looked at me in the mean light of the flinty stars.

  “Get out of here, Merritt,” he said, and his face twisted and tears sprang into his eyes and ran down to meet the black pirate’s beard. But he did not turn away.

  I turned and ran. I ran out of the yard and past the boy’s earthquake inventions under the shed, and past the dusty Jeep, and started down the gravel path toward the lodge. I needed no flashlight tonight; the very path seemed to glow with pale, tired heat. I ran and ran. Above me, off to my left over the lower ridges of still redwoods, Arcturus slid down the sky, going home. It looked fake, a painted star, a burned-out star in a cardboard firmament. Dead, as dead and cold as the space around my heart where, for the past small lifetime, T.C. Bridgewater had lived.

  “Be my same stars, T.C.…”

  “I will. I always will.…”

  I stopped on the path and turned and cupped my hands.

  “Carpe diem,” I shouted.

  “Carpe diem,” came his voice, a small flag in the vast, dead night.

  I turned back and jogged on down the path. I did not cry for him again until much, much later.

  11

  I was given a gift that night, one that you often receive in childhood but seldom later. It was as if a good fairy had realized she missed her appointment with me when the gifts were being passed out around my cradle and came bustling back to make up the oversight. It was the gift of sleep. Sleep as panacea, sleep as opiate, sleep as oblivion. Forever after, I have been able, when pain becomes overwhelming, simply to sleep. It has rarely failed me.

  When I got back to the lodge the night before I walked straight past Glynn’s slightly opened door, saw the still mounds of girl and dog, went into my bedroom, and went to sleep. I would have said, in that dull red mindlessness of loss, that I would never sleep again, but instead it was as if I would never wake. I slept without moving until the pale first light of morning fell on my face and finally brought me back.

  I lay there like someone who has wakened after a bad accident, a collision. Every muscle in my body hurt, and my limbs felt as heavy as cast iron. The thought of even moving them made me sick with exhaustion. For what seemed a very long time I lay there immobile, trying to assemble the thoughts I would need to get us through this day: this day of great distances, of tearing endings, and dreaded beginnings. My mind flailed tiredly in all directions: Laura. What should I do about Laura? T.C. had said he would keep trying to trace her after we had gone and would let me know when he heard something, but I did not want that. I did not think I could pick up a telephone and hear his voice speaking neutrally of my sister from under the great, lost-to-me trees. I simply wanted Laura out of my heart and off my hands.

  Glynn. About Glynn I could only feel detached anger and pain, and a kind of abstract shame. I did not feel like coping with this hurtful and hurt new daughter, either. There was nothing left in me that could meet this dangerous complexity. If I could have gotten home without exchanging another word with her, I would have done it with alacrity. These two creatures, both of my blood and both so much of my making—at that moment I loved them not.

  Pom. I did not even know how to think about Pom. I did not, in that b
led-out moment, know who Pom was or what he was to me. What he might be from now on was simply unimaginable. There wasn’t any from now on. There was scarcely a now. Carpe diem, T.C.’s voice said in my head, and I felt agony rush at me, pecking. Oh, T.C., you seize it. I don’t want this day.

  T.C. For a long, still moment I lay there so filled with the reality of T.C., of the actuality of him, that it was as if he had entered my body and lived under my skin. My heartbeat felt like his; my fingers touched the cloth of the coverlet and knew how it would feel to T.C. It was as if a conduit, a major vessel, ran from his body on the veranda sofa down through the earth to the lodge and into my own.

  I can’t do this day, T.C., I said to him in my mind, and his answer came clear and true: Yes, you can. Get up. I go with you.

  At that moment I heard the sound of china clinking in the kitchen and the gurgle of coffee being poured into a mug. I sprang up. It was him; he had come for me after all, he would heal this awful day somehow; he was waiting for me.

  I flew into the kitchen, still in my underpants and bra. Laura sat on a stool at the kitchen table, a steaming cup beside her, her head in her hands as if she slept sitting there. The disappointment was so profound that I closed my eyes against it. Then I took a deep breath and opened them. Here is Laura, I thought witlessly. What does this mean? I don’t know how to think about this.

  She raised her head and looked at me. She looked terrible. Her tan had faded and was flaking off the miraculous cheekbones in mustardy patches, and there were deep, incised blue circles under the slanted amber eyes. Her gilt hair was lank and lifeless, and she had simply jerked it back seemingly without combing it and pulled it tight with a rubber band. Somehow that rubber band spoke more vividly of damage to me than anything else about her desiccated face. She had often scolded me for using rubber bands in my hair.

  “It breaks the hairs off and makes them thin and scraggly,” she would say. “I would no more do that to my hair than I would pour tar over it.”