Sometimes after dinner we would play poker or sometimes Anton would gather us around to scare us with a ghost story, having fun with us. Once Mom jumped out with a stocking over her head and a dagger poised in her hand.
Anton organized us with scrawled lists indicating who had to do what when. His name was never on any of the lists, which Jane pointed out. He taped the lists to the cupboards in the camper. From the cassette player Anton’s classical music would blare. Evenings we weren’t allowed to listen to anything else.
“Why don’t you ever help out?” Jane asked Anton one night after dinner. “Why isn’t your name ever on those lists you write up?” We all sat at the table. I took a deep breath. I wished she hadn’t said that. Everything had been going along just fine. Our faces were illuminated orange by candlelight, our bodies lost to the dark. It was quiet out there and the night sky was bright and thick with stars. An airplane flew overhead.
“Don’t tell me what to do, babe,” Anton said calmly. He took a sip of Jack Daniel’s, holding Jane with his eyes. “I’ve been driving all day.” Silence.
“Driving us to where?” Jane asked.
“Jane, babe, be happy with where you are.” The muscles at the corner of his mouth tightened and his eyes squinted.
“You tell us what to do all the time,” Jane persisted, “yet you never do anything yourself.” Jane knew how to provoke him. She knew how to argue.
Mom sighed. Her thumbnail ran over her lips. “What about dessert?” she suggested.
“Looky here, babe,” Anton said, shifting forward in his seat, “do your dinner job and don’t let me hear about it. I’m warning you.” He gulped some more Jack Daniel’s. The music blared – Beethoven, Mozart, I didn’t know which. I could feel Anton getting bigger. Even his sideburns became more severe. Jane’s braids hung long, pulling her face down. Her big brown eyes opened wide.
“Warning me? I think you’re just lazy,” she spit the words out, shoving her chair back from the table with a stack of dishes in her arms. “All you do is smoke dope and drink and it makes you lazy.”
Anton stood up quickly, raising his hand to strike, and a surge bolted through me. His chair fell back and he kicked it out of the way, moving toward Jane. Julia jumped up and blocked him, while Jane walked quickly to the camper. She was too proud to run. “What are you going to do? Hit me?” she asked, turning to face him. He loomed above her with his hand rising again and I thought he would actually do it. I tried to get up, but Finny whispered, “Don’t,” laying his big hand on my thigh – protecting me now.
“Cut it out, Dad,” Caroline yelled, and Julia screamed and grabbed his arm. “Stop it,” she said, her eyes piercing him. He tried to knock her out of the way.
“Anton?” Mom asked. She sounded small, tentative. Yet she stood up and went toward Julia. “What are you thinking of?”
Anton froze. He couldn’t look at Mom. Finally, Caroline and Julia took the plates away from Jane and they all went into the camper. Then Nicholas went in and the four of them talked – the big kids. I could hear Jane crying and I could see the silhouette of Julia comforting her.
“Looky here, babe,” Anton said, loud, into the camper. “I’m warning you. This once. I’m not going to put up with this.” Then he disappeared into the night. All we could see of him was the amber tip of his joint.
I told myself, he tried to be patient. There was so much to organize with all these kids. But even so, I wished we had our car. We started eating and talking again, cleaning up. Sofia spoke gently to Mom, explaining. Finny stayed by my side. I could feel he wanted to explain too. After a fight we’d all feel a little closer, more like a family.
“Anton has a lot on his mind,” Mom said later that evening, apologizing, trying to make everything all right. “With Finny’s birthday approaching. He’s adopted, you know.” She held us, Jane, Julia and me, with her eyes. Her look pleaded with us, Forgive him. She explained about Finny and I hated her for using him as an excuse for Anton’s behavior, for forgiving Anton so easily. I thought of cats again, ones from the 4-H club and the pound. Skinny and sad with droopy eyes, the corners of which were filled with crusty dried tears. When my sisters had wanted to torment me they had said that I had been adopted. I realized we didn’t torment each other so much anymore.
“I’m sorry, babe.” I heard Anton apologizing to Jane in the night. The rest of us were trying to fall asleep in the camper. “It’s been a hard time. You’re not mad at me are you? You forgive me, I know you do. Right, babe?”
♦
Finny. Big hands and those magnificent eyes. Naked and tiny, he’s holding the bag of marijuana. It’s an enormous bag and he looks kind of silly holding on to it; he’s carrying it around like a security blanket. Anton has to remind him not to carry it around in public. But for the most part there is no public, it’s just us, and those vast stretches of desert with nowhere to hide, and that overwhelming sun. I just stare, making sure nothing happens to him. Finny, too, can concentrate for hours. Sometimes I can feel his eyes on me like I feel the sun on my skin, burning into me – as if he’s trying to figure out what it is that we share.
Sure-boned and flat-footed, Finny is. Flat-footed like me. Peasant feet, that’s what Mom says, Dad’s feet. Anything that’s bad about us belongs to Dad. Jane’s weak chin and brown eyes. Julia’s stubby fingers. But Julia’s nose, that slightly upturned, aristocratic nose, belongs to Mom and so do Jane’s long legs and slender knees and so do my cheekbones and my green eyes and long, curling lashes. My crooked teeth and dark hair are Dad’s.
I study Finny to see what his mother’s given him, to imagine what she looks like. Thick curly hair, a strong jaw, high cheekbones, olive skin. His hipbones poke through his skin and there’s a birthmark there, a blotch of brown like a stain that could easily be wiped away. I love everything about him. I think about the baby Mom almost had with Anton and I think about Timothy saying that baby would be his brother and not mine and I wonder if Finny has any sisters he doesn’t know about.
“What are you looking at?” Finny asks, glancing at me from the corner of his eye.
♦
Mornings before the heat. Anton would go off on the Honda 70 to get a paper, if a town were near enough, and some sort of Danish for a surprise. Before breakfast Anton would say grace and read a short prayer. “Eating is one act that we all must do.” His face serene and gentle. Eyes contemplative, hands folded in prayer. “Food is a surprise which we often don’t think about.” Then he’d say the prayer. Mornings, fights of the night before would be forgotten.
In the beginning, I didn’t care about all the prayers and blessings and I didn’t really listen. Anton had a red book and in it he’d written his favorite prayers and blessings and with it in his hands he stood up at the head of the table. His mouth was dry and sticky when he spoke. His kids bowed their heads, so we bowed our heads too and everyone held hands. Finny’s were sweaty and cold.
♦
Oh my God I am heartily sorry for having offended thee. I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell but most of all because I love thee oh my God who art all pure and deserving of all my love.
♦
Mom smelled in the morning, a kind of old smell like bad breath except it came from her skin. You could see through her nightgown, her big breasts like eggplants drooping heavily down her chest. She loved that Anton was religious. She said Dad wasn’t religious. She said he’d never had a sacred thought. But it did something for her, made her feel more moral, good, incredibly good. I didn’t bow my head. I watched her, her eyes gently shut, and I could feel she was far away and then I bowed my head and gently shut my eyes too and listened to Anton’s voice, a part of me trying to go there, wherever, with Mom.
♦
In small towns like Tecopa or big towns like Barstow, Anton met strangers. He and Mom wandered off, leaving us to stretch our legs and drink our sodas. They met a tattooed Indian riding a Clydesdale horse. They met a you
ng bald woman with silver barrettes sewn into her scalp. They met a cowboy driving a platinum Cadillac with a pair of bullhorns straddling the hood. And from these strangers they learned of county fairs with rodeos and fiddling contests and chili-eating contests, racing armadillos and tobacco-spitting contests. They learned of craters made from meteors and craters formed from sunken volcanoes in which ran creeks of gold. They heard of sites filled with dinosaur bones and sites with the remains of early man, of sand dunes from which blasted hot springs, and he and Mom wanted to find it all.
“Ask and you shall receive,” he would say, with that wink that invited you into his world.
“He’s a phony,” Jane said to me in the baby blue and smelly bathroom of some isolated service station where we were washing up. Her long braids frayed like ropes and I thought, she’s at it again, and I knew before long there’d be another fight. Her entire body was wet and soapy. “A nobody, gathering us around to feel like a somebody. He’s a monster. Helmut was right.” She scrubbed with brown paper towels. At that moment I didn’t agree with her. It took very little for me to love. Momentarily I let my twenty dollars go. I forgot about plans and destinations; in the end the places would always be there just as he had promised: the ghost town, the craters and the dinosaur bones.
We saw a man break the world record for spitting tobacco – thirty-six feet, one inch. In Pahrump we got drunk on the best desert wine and won lots of quarters that were as good as the promised gold. I forgot about Finny. I forgot about home. Everything – the road, the sky, the Joshua trees – would hang in suspense, waiting for us to discover our discoveries. It was all there, everything.
♦
The first stranger of Anton’s that we met was James. James was an English hitchhiker and he led us to an ancient inland sea and bird sanctuary with over three hundred species: red-winged blackbirds and song sparrows, common yellowthroats and killdeer, snowy egrets and the black-masked loggerhead shrike. He had binoculars and monoculars and bird books, and it wasn’t long before we were settled there with the orange tent erect. Anton was a Jesuit and a giver and he never left anyone in need. Through James, Anton tried to teach us generosity.
“Where’s he gonna fit in?” Sofia asked, leaning out the back door. Sun flooded into the camper. She wore her halter top and short shorts and a pair of platform sandals. One of her arms linked the outside ladder and she dangled out the door with a smile. Her eyes inspected the stranger, absorbing him, while Anton helped him in with his pack, asking him questions to make him feel welcome and comfortable. “We’re crowded enough as it is back here with Eve’s kids.”
“Don’t start, babe,” Anton said.
I held the gold rock tight in my fist and thought of Dad. He would never ever pick up someone we didn’t know, a hitchhiker. My nostrils flared.
James was quiet at first, sitting on the floor with his tired body folded over his knees. Then he started asking questions, trying to get to know us. Sofia did most of the talking. “We’re not all family,” she said, “so don’t get the wrong idea.” Then she distinguished us, first by family, the Fureys and the Coopers, then by groups: the big kids and little kids. “Anton is our dad and he’s a doctor. You can call him Dr. Anton. Eve is their mother and she’s just like Doris Day.”
“Grace Kelly,” I said to Sofia, studying the ends of my hair. I’d picked that habit up from Sofia. She could look at the ends of her hair for hours. I didn’t see what was so fascinating about it, but I pretended just the same. Dad had once said Mom was as beautiful as Marilyn Monroe, but Mom hadn’t liked that. She’d said it wasn’t nice to be like Marilyn Monroe and had suggested Grace Kelly instead.
“Doris Day,” Sofia said. “She has no sex appeal and she’s not elegant.” The others ignored us. For the most part, everyone except for me ignored Sofia.
James wore faded jeans and a T-shirt with holes. His hair was long, brown and curly, and his skin tanned. He was thin, medium-tall, with high cheekbones. Around his neck hung chunks of turquoise, and silver bands ringed his fingers. He had pale blue eyes flecked with yellow. His accent was smooth, with a twist of sweetness. He came from both London and Scotland and was in America trying to discover what it was he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to be a poet. Recently he’d been robbed and was waiting for a wire transfer to come through. I thought he was cute. He smelled of smoke and of outside, wonderful and clean.
“Furey?” James said. “Like Michael Furey from ‘The Dead’?”
“That’s right,” Caroline answered. No one else knew what they were talking about.
“And Cooper,” Julia said. “Like James Fenimore Cooper.” James looked around at us hanging all over the place. Finny sat at the table and rolled Anton’s joints. “Out of sight,” James said and relaxed his back into the counter and straightened out his legs, getting comfortable. It didn’t take him long to be absorbed by us. We all fell in love with him. We all wanted an English accent. He taught us words like bloody and suss and chap and brilliant. He didn’t take sides, Fureys or Coopers, because he knew us as one family, as if we’d always been this way. By Finny’s birthday, two days later, James was like a ninth child and just as much a part of the family as any of us, with a dinner job and his name scrawled on Anton’s lists, with no plans to leave.
♦
In a field of juniper bushes at the edge of the ancient sea, we collected around Anton like a congregation around its preacher. Family meeting. We had family meetings all the time to discuss stuff: where we were headed; what us kids thought about Anton and Mom as a couple; how we felt about God; what food we should buy for the week; you name it, we had a family meeting about it. Breakfast just finished, plates were heaped on the aluminum table. One hundred degrees in the shade, but dry and light as down. Near our feet little balls of cacti clung to rocks like sea urchins. In the distance the White Mountains and the jagged Sierra Nevada rose purple to snow-covered peaks. Their reflection shimmered on the lake. It was an eerie lake, like nothing I had ever seen, with thousands of white towers emerging from the water and from the banks, knobby and fragile like enormous sand-dripped castles. I wanted some of those rocks.
Brine flies droned steadily, feasting on brine shrimp, and the surface of the lake was thick black. The flies lifted and settled in waves.
Anton read a few prayers about nothing becoming something, about the generosity of Christianity, about saints and sins and heaven and love. Divine love. And I tried to pay attention to all he was saying but couldn’t. I didn’t care. No one paid attention but Caroline and Jane, who both prayed with Anton. Caroline reminded me of the Virgin, the way she folded her hands in prayer. Timothy spit spitballs at our feet and Sofia polished her nails. Julia stood near me. The sound of Anton’s words soothed, and I thought of his soft hand patting my head. Nicholas filmed the scene, pausing now and again to listen to Anton. Nicholas looked pale and sick, as if he could throw up at any second. He’d had too much to drink the night before.
Finny’s presents were a colorful heap on the table, with the IOU taped to one of the boxes. Anton’s glasses rested on the end of his nose and he studied the pages of his book earnestly, squinting. He seemed gentle and almost beautiful. He wore a long white cotton tunic with an embroidered yoke. He was comforting and the shirt billowed away from his body. I looked at his hands. I looked at Finny, standing in the group impatiently, kicking the dust; I wondered if he knew what was coming.
“The beauty of Christianity,” Anton said, “is forgiveness. To learn that Christ loves you and forgives you is to be saved.” Anton spoke on about forgiveness and generosity. Forgiveness. I didn’t know anything much about religion, but it seemed both grand yet nearby in him. The wind fluttered the napkins on the picnic table. The moon was still in the sky, thin and transparent, from the night before, and that worried me. I thought it should be somewhere else.
When Anton finished preaching, Mom led Finny away to the camper with a handful of dishes. Jane pulled me close to her. I knew this kind o
f thing would make Jane sad. I hoped she wouldn’t cry. Sometimes it was as if all the pain in the world went through Jane.
“I’m including the Coopers and James in this because we’re all family here.” James stood there awkwardly and uncomfortably, smoking a cigarette he’d rolled himself. I worried he wouldn’t like us anymore, knowing so much about us. Anton stared at the ground. “No need to keep anything from anybody. Today I’m going to tell Finny about his mother. As my kids already know, he has a different mother. This won’t be easy for him, so I want you all to be supportive.” He spoke with a penitent voice. He talked about mistakes and about how good things come from mistakes. He said Jesus had been a mistake, which I really didn’t understand and it confused me when I thought about it so I didn’t for very long. It seemed like it was painful for Anton to talk. His eyes couldn’t meet ours and his head jerked a bit. “I was selfish,” he said. “Too stupidly Catholic to believe in divorce then.” He fingered his chin and held back tears. He waited until they passed to speak. “Selfish. I wouldn’t let his mother have him.” I was sorry for Anton. I thought he might cry, but instead he read a prayer.
When Mom and Finny came back, Anton took Finny for a walk. As they walked away across that brown parched land, they became smaller and smaller, two specks in the distance, the tufa towers rising all around. I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, watching Finny’s long hair. His snarled curls. His plaid pants hung low on his hips. The cuffs dragged in the dirt. His enormous hand clasped Anton’s. I held my rock and thought about my father, the day that he left. I thought about us being here and then I thought about the moon and the men landing on the moon and I looked up at it and then looked around and I imagined this was how the moon would be and I knew Finny was about to lose a lot. His world was about to alter permanently, half of it draining out of him to evaporate in this lonely landscape. I stood there watching as he receded into space, wanting to scream for him to stop, as if I could save him. Sand blew into my sandals, between my toes.
Bright Angel Time Page 10