Tart

by Jody Gehrman

  “Yeah, I think so. Don’t you?”

  I look back up at the layers and layers of them, so vast they surprise me all over again. “Never occurred to me.”

  “I think everything’s different in the presence of stars. Food tastes different—”

  “Different, how?”

  “Saltier, I guess. And sweeter. Music’s different, too—more dreamy, and lonelier. More—” he pauses, and I can see his silhouette clearly now; his face is tilted upward “—more longing in it. And everything takes on this particular scent. You smell it, don’t you?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” I say, thinking he’d make a damn fine Romeo if he were ten years younger—he’s got that dreamy-melancholy thing going.

  “Wait a second,” he says, and sprints back the way we came. In a minute I hear music floating on the warm September air: acoustic guitar and a melody I’ve never heard, but it’s like I already know it and love it. Some things are like that; sushi tasted totally familiar the first time I put it in my mouth. My parents were choking on the wasabi and I just went on chewing with the gentle smile of someone coming home.

  The man singing has one of those resonant, ragged, sexy voices that comes from someplace deep and cavernous in his smoke-filled lungs.

  With your measured abandon and your farmer’s walk, with your “let’s go” smile and your bawdy talk.

  Clay returns, and he stands so close to me that our arms touch.

  “You see? Sounds different under the stars, right?” he asks.

  “I haven’t heard it any other way,” I say. “How can I be sure?”

  “You’re not a Greg Brown fan?”

  With your mother’s burden and your father’s stare, with your pretty dresses and your ragged underwear…

  “I could be converted,” I say, smiling. “I’ve just never heard him before.”

  “Never heard of—my God. Talk about deprived.”

  The skin of his arm feels very warm against mine. Hot, in fact. I lean slightly toward him so that more of my skin touches more of his.

  “It’s good you’re not set in your ways,” he says. “If there’s one thing I’m evangelical about, it’s music.” It’s a good thing I refuse to analyze this; if I did, I’d hear the whispered implication that he plans to evangelize me.

  “This song’s been haunting me all day,” he says. “I think it might be about you. Tell me the truth, Greg Brown’s in love with you, right?”

  “Can’t get anything past you,” I say, but now I want to shut up so I can hear the song and find out what Clay thinks of me. I can only catch certain lines now and then, though, between the crickets and the breeze playfully tousling the pines.

  With your pledge of allegiance and your ringless hand, with your young woman’s terror and your old woman’s plans…

  “Uh-oh. I just realized,” Clay says. “I’m doing it again.”

  “Hmm?” I’m still straining to hear the song. Will your children look at you and wonder, about this woman made of lightning bugs and thunder…take in what you can’t help but show with your name that is half yes, half no.

  “I’m being a DJ.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I do this when I’m nervous—try to talk through music. Not even my music. Pathetic.”

  “I don’t think it’s pathetic,” I say. “I think it’s sweet.”

  He turns slightly, and so do I, and our arm contact becomes my breasts fitting warmly against his chest, and now the sound of his breathing is so close it blends with everything else: the shimmery pine needles and the cricket-frog chorus and the lyrics I can’t quite follow anymore.

  He bends down slightly, the shadow of his face moving toward mine, but instead of the expected searching lips, I feel his teeth biting down gently on my lower lip. I suck in my breath.

  “I wanted to do that for hours,” he says, his voice thick in his throat.

  “Bite me?”

  “Mmm. Taste you.”

  This guy’s not normal, I think, and a montage of our day unfurls inside my brain with the frenetic pace of time-lapse photography: the bus exploding into ribbons of orange and yellow, the kaleidoscope of the pool balls at the Owl Club, Nick and his jelly-smudged Ramones shirt, Clay feeding me calamari with his fingers. His mouth closes on mine now, and I can taste the day there, the effervescent weirdness of it, the unshakable sensation that I’m being marked by every minute.

  You won’t remember the half-open door, or the train that won’t even stop there anymore, for you.

  CHAPTER 7

  Dawn. Sky is a crazy electric blue. Slivers of it appear when the grass-scented breeze lifts the airy curtains and reveals the morning in triangular slices. I flip over and notice for the first time the circular skylight. Human beings are made for yurts, I think. “Stars make things taste saltier and sweeter.” You won’t remember the half-open door. Clay is positioned in a slightly diagonal tilt; one leg is draped over mine, lips slightly parted as he snores a soft, wheezing prayer to the sleep gods. Medea’s here, curled up close to my head on the foreign pillow, and Dog—what’s her name? Cindy? no, Sandy—is curled up at our feet. Medea opens one eye, checks out proximity of Dog, goes back to sleep. I should be shocked at abruptly finding myself in this tranquil, domestic tableau.

  Nothing has ever seemed more natural.

  I follow Medea’s lead and collapse back into dreams.

  Knock knock knock. Knock knock knock.

  Who’s drumming? Jesus, California hippies for you. Always beating their bongos…

  Knock knock knock. Knock knock.

  “Clay? You awake?” A woman’s voice. Edgy. Irritated.

  My eyes pop open. Friend? Has Friend come to visit?

  “Clay? Come on, you there? I need your help.” Softer now, asking, “Can I come in?”

  I look over at Clay, who is still in the position I saw him in last: stretched corner to corner across the bed, mouth open, snoring. I poke his arm urgently. No response.

  “Listen, I know you must be in there, hon.”

  Hon?

  “I know I said I’d respect your privacy, but the car won’t start and I have a dentist appointment.” Pause. I can hear her swearing softly. “Clay.” Another pause, and then a decision: the doorknob turns. “I’m coming in, okay?”

  Oh, God. Paralyzed, clutching sheets to my naked chest. I want to shake snoring Clay awake but I can’t move as the door swings open, followed by a door-frame-shaped blast of sunlight and Woman.

  We’re both perfectly still as we stare at each other. She’s so backlit, I can barely make out her features. I can tell only that she’s petite, dark-haired, tightly wound, the type I’d cast as Hedda Gabler: intense, compact, ready for a fight. This is all the data I’m able to gather, blinking into the sunlight, before a whispered “shit” escapes her lips and she backs out the door, slamming it behind her. I hear her footsteps rapidly retreating.

  Wanton Tart and Cat Shot by Furious Gabler. Man Says Both Just Friends.

  I fall back against my pillow (not my pillow—my pillow is cremated) and close my eyes for a couple of seconds, willing the previous scene to rewind and erase. No use. Instead the scene is in a perpetual loop, playing over and over across my closed lids.

  “Clay?”

  More snores.

  “Hey. Clay?” I’m getting louder, now, shaking him gently but firmly.

  “Dad?” he asks, his eyes popping open in alarm. Again, that bizarre, maternal urge stirs in me—some eerie, foreign desire to say “Shh, it’s okay” and kiss him back to sleep. I make a conscious effort to strangle this urge. There will be no shushing or kisses this morning.

  All the same, I can’t keep a tiny bit of warmth from my voice. “No, it’s me.”

  A little-boy smile takes over his face. “Oh. Ms. Claudia, I presume?” He wraps his arms around me, pulling me down against his chest, and for a second or two I’m so intoxicated by the hot-skin smell of this embrace I nearly forget that his better half is currentl
y rifling through her sock drawer for a .38 special. Resist, Claudia. Resist.

  “Listen,” I say, extricating myself from his arms. “There’s been a little incident this morning.”

  “Did we wet the bed?”

  “Not that kind of incident. An angry-woman-bursts-into-room sort of incident.”

  He looks stunned. “Shit. Really?”

  “Would I make this up?”

  “How do I know?” he counters. “I hardly know you.”

  “Yes, well, ditto,” I say. “And obviously, there’s a few things I should have asked. Like, say, ‘Are you married?’” I’m sitting up now, hugging my knees.

  “Claudia,” he reaches out to touch my wild nest of hair. “Shit. I’m really sorry.” Not the oh-that-was-just-my-crazy-kid-sister explanation I was praying for.

  I stare at him incredulously. “So you are, then? Married, I mean?”

  “Well, divorced.” He pauses. “Practically.”

  “What does practically divorced mean?”

  “We’re legally separated.”

  “Is she the Friend in the cottage?” He hesitates before nodding. “Jesus, Clay, you had like nine hours of candid conversation to come clean with me, at least let me know what I’m getting—”

  “You never asked.”

  Indeed. What can I say? I never asked.

  CHAPTER 8

  It’s foggy and I’m shivering when Clay drops me and Medea at the Greyhound station downtown. His truck was warm and smelled like cocoa butter. I wanted nothing more than to curl up there before his heater and never leave, but my pride forced me to refuse his offers of a sweatshirt and breakfast. On the drive here, our conversation was limited but revealing.

  CLAY: I know this looks really bad.

  CLAUDIA: Uh-huh.

  CLAY: Really, really bad. I feel like such a shit.

  CLAUDIA: Okay…

  CLAY: Did you talk to her?

  CLAUDIA: Who?

  CLAY: Monica.

  CLAUDIA: No. It wasn’t exactly an ideal condition for conversation.

  CLAY: I’m not in love with her anymore. I want you to understand that.

  CLAUDIA: Right. You’re just married to her.

  CLAY: Not for very long.

  CLAUDIA: And you didn’t mention this earlier because…?

  CLAY: I know, I know. This looks really bad. (Repeat)

  So here I am, sitting at the Greyhound station with two homeless guys bundled into blankets, one of them reading GQ. Suddenly I’m living the lyrics of every old-timey down-and-out blues number. I’m still wearing this positively crusty-with-human-grime ensemble: orange sundress, sweat-drenched bra, bloodstained underwear, and I’ve little hope of changing into something “fresher” (as my mother would say) anytime soon, seeing as I now own no other clothing. In fact, I now own absolutely nothing.

  Oh, God. My favorite Levi’s, reduced to ash. Sea-green cashmere sweater: ditto. Everything—no—I mean everything I ever called my own is now dwelling on another plane of existence.

  I plod toward the ticket booth and realize I have no idea where I’m going. My original plan was to camp in the bus until I found a place to live—hopefully before school started. Now the bus is, for obvious reasons, not a reliable dwelling. So I’ve got to figure out where to crash until I can rent my own little shelter from the world. I tell myself this is all very Zen, very neo-Dharma bum and therefore cool (except I keep lugging my cat everywhere—did Kerouac do that?), but when I approach the glassed-in face of the ticket vendor and I look into her kind blue eyes, I find myself fighting off tears. I fumble for some dollars, pulling them from my bra, but they’re so wrinkled and wilted I can’t force them into any semblance of order.

  “Morning,” she says. “Where would you like to go?”

  “Um.”

  She smiles. “Let’s start with the basics—north, south, east or west?”

  I manage a weak chuckle. “Give me a second,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

  I sit down on one of the benches and mop at my tears with the back of my hand. I close my eyes and try to breathe. Medea squirms in her box. I open the flaps a crack. Her eyes are glow-in-the-dark as they peer up at me from within her shadowy little cardboard cage. “Shh,” I say. “I’ll get you a nice treat when we get home.” Home.

  “Excuse me,” I say to the ticket lady. “Do you have any buses that go to Calistoga?”

  She consults a thick directory. “Santa Rosa,” she says. “Is that close enough?”

  “I guess it’ll have to be.”

  “One way or round trip?”

  “One way, please.”

  “That’ll be eleven dollars.”

  I hand her a limp twenty and she counts me out my change.

  “You going to check out those mud baths?”

  “God, no,” I say. “Just going home.”

  Calistoga’s only about three or four hours from Santa Cruz by car, but by bus it’s a twelve-hour saga. I take the Greyhound to Santa Rosa, then another bus from there, and finally walk the last eight blocks to my father’s house. By the time Medea and I arrive on his doorstep we’re exhausted and snappish, having schlepped across three counties in raunchy-smelling clothes with a full cast of trying characters, including an ancient man in a wheelchair who, having mistaken me for his dead wife, wouldn’t stop trying to hold my hand, and a wiry little elf of a bus driver who threatened to kick us off when he heard Medea mewing.

  Over the course of the day I’ve developed a serious obsession with showering. That first blast of cool water on my chest, leaning in to soak my face, then my hair; the gentle massage of liquid needles against my scalp. The whole experience has become my nirvana—a longed-for state I can almost taste but never achieve.

  It would have been quicker to go to Mom’s in Mill Valley, but thinking of her latest husband and her spoiled, Britney Spears-clone stepdaughter makes me want to yuke, so I opt for Dad’s.

  “Claudia,” my father says, opening the door. “You’re—wow. You’re here.”

  “Yeah. Sorry I didn’t call.” We just stand there awkwardly, surveying each other, and for an agonizing second I think he’s not going to ask me in. Then, as if reading my thoughts, he steps back and gestures toward the living room a little too eagerly, like a waiter in an empty restaurant. “Come in, come in,” he gushes. And then, his tone going puzzled again, “You’re really here.”

  “Didn’t you get my e-mail?”

  He just looks confused. “Oh, you know me—I haven’t really adjusted to all of this technology stuff.”

  “Dad, can I let Medea out? She’s been in this stupid box all day.”

  “Who?”

  But I’m already releasing the poor thing; she circles my legs, blinking into the light, looking a little crazed and disoriented. “My cat,” I say, and sigh. “It’s been a very long day.” I say that a lot, lately.

  He squints down at her as she rubs against his shin. “Hello, kitty,” he says doubtfully. “What’s her name?”

  “Medea.”

  “Oh,” he says, stiffly. “Hello, Maria.”

  And then he starts to sneeze. Five times. With increasing volume and violence. Jesus, what is it with men and cats? Clay’s the only guy I ever met who didn’t practically disintegrate in the face of a little cat fur. No. Don’t even think about Clay Parker.

  “Ah-ah-ah-allergic,” my father manages to articulate between sneezes.

  “Okay. I’m sorry. Um, can I put her in the guest room for now? I’d put her out, but she’s so disoriented I’m afraid she might wander off—”

  “Garage,” he says, yanking a handkerchief from his back pocket and sneezing some more. So off she goes, into the garage, mewing in protest until I fetch her a bit of tuna fish and a saucer of milk. I sit there with her for a while, playing absently with her tail and watching her eat, enveloped in the cool, cathedral-like stillness of my father’s garage. As my eyes adjust to the shadows, I gaze around at the meticulously organized shelves and fil
e cabinets, the worktable with tools hanging on hooks, arranged categorically: drills here, saws there. It occurs to me that these may even be alphabetized, which I find more than a little depressing. The air is scented not with the usual grease-and-grime smell of most people’s garages, but with my father’s favorite all-purpose cleaner for twenty years now: Pine-Sol. Parked in its usual place—dead center—is Dad’s 1956 Dodge Plymouth convertible. It gleams with spotless pride in the dark, never having known a dirty day in its life.

  I find Dad in the kitchen, cutting up celery. The house, like everything in my father’s life, is so clean you could eat off any surface, including the tops of high cabinets and the icy-white linoleum floor. He bought a tract home soon after I moved to Austin—one of those creepy, cookie-cutter models that scream “No Imagination.”

  “So,” he says, handing me a glass of milk with ice in it. I don’t usually drink milk, but I sip politely, anyway. “How long are you here for?”

  “You mean, here, at your house? Or…?”

  “When do you go back to Texas?”

  “Pop, listen. I got a job in Santa Cruz.”

  He smiles. He has very white teeth, perfectly straight; my mom says he was still wearing braces when they got married. “You’ve got a Santa Cruz in Texas? Isn’t that funny. I guess all those saints really made the—”

  “Santa Cruz. California, Dad. I got a job at the university.”

  He stops cutting celery and stares at me a moment through his horn-rimmed glasses. He’s got very light blue eyes and a face that is harder to read than any face I’ve ever encountered. He goes back to slicing. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. Of course I’m serious.” I drink more of my milk and try not to think about the report I read once about cows in America being so mistreated and diseased that they get loads of pus in the product. Eugh. I put the glass down.

  “What about your boyfriend? Is he moving here, too?”

  “What boyfriend?” I’m unable to stop myself from this perverse response. Something about his calm, measured slicing of celery and his luminous white tile countertops are getting on my nerves. I remember now why I’ve only seen my father five or six times in the past ten years.