Isabelle
Oh, Isabelle—how does she manage to see into his soul so effortlessly? Because of course she’s right. Fear has become his constant companion. When did it first show up? He remembers a boyhood laced with fear, but that was of a whole different order, that was fear with a clear cause.
His father, already disappointed with life by the time Daniel was born, had a temper, was a screamer, and Daniel and his older brother, Roman, would find ways to stay out of his path. They became practiced disappearing artists who slipped between houses, ran the alleys, hid out in the comfort of other people’s families. This was the early 1950s, and everyone they knew in the Polish section of Erie, Pennsylvania, had lots of children. When Gus Jablonski was “in a mood,” as Daniel’s mother called it, his two sons would seek shelter at someone else’s dinner table. And be welcomed.
But then, when Daniel was eight, there was his father’s accident. A load of steel rebar. A surface slicked by overnight rain. One second with his mind elsewhere and Gus Jablonski slipped, crushing three lumbar vertebrae. The subsequent spinal fusion yielded only chronic pain. “An ironworker’s lot,” his father always said, still proud of his profession, the buildings they created, the bridges that stood only because some arrogant, foolhardy men were willing to put their bodies on the line for them.
After that, things got particularly bad at home. Some days Daniel would see his mother dressing his large, barrel-chested father the way she had dressed the boys when they were toddlers. There’s the memory of Gus sitting on the edge of the bed, wincing, as his wife slowly guided each of his arms into its shirtsleeve. Next she would kneel in front of him, working the buttons of the shirt closed, buckling his belt, and tying his shoelaces. Sometimes Gus would place a hand on her head—in gratitude or subjugation, Daniel was never sure.
After the beginning months of false hope yielding little improvement, there were the years of frustration and fury, accompanied by bouts of drinking to dull the pain. Those were the years that Daniel practically lived at Benny Janusz’s, his best friend’s, house. The nights with Benny’s family helped him weather the worst of Gus’s alcohol-fueled despair. More times than not, when morning came and Daniel warily reentered his own cramped kitchen, he would find his father at the breakfast table, head down, reading the paper. And his mother always gentle, always there, calm now to match the calm in the kitchen. Something would have transpired during the night to make his father subdued and penitent. Even as a child, Daniel could tell the storm had blown over.
On those mornings, Roman, a grin on his face, would throw Daniel his catcher’s mitt—“Let’s go, Dan-de-lion!”—and the boys would escape into the neighborhood streets, sure to be able to scrounge up enough boys with a quick tour of the surrounding blocks to make their version of a baseball game. Suddenly all seemed right with the world. There was enthusiasm and silliness, the blessed release of physical exertion, and often happiness. So that was different, Daniel understands, because the fear didn’t stick around. It didn’t invade his very spirit.
But this fear that has taken up residence now is as much a part of his cellular being as his DNA. Daniel remembers it crept into his life surreptitiously around the time he was contemplating his fourth novel. The writing of it brought him no joy, and he had the nagging suspicion that it would fare no better than his third, which was roundly panned by the very same critics who had praised his first two.
He’d lost his gift, he realized. Lost his compass, which had been unerringly true. Lost the ability to write from a sacred place within him. Lost his way. That’s when the fear began to seep in—when he didn’t know in which direction to turn, when he married Cheryl on a desperate whim, hoping that her crazy life force might jolt him back to himself.
And then the fear just grew and spread like a malignancy. At first it showed up occasionally, attaching itself to public events like book readings, when there was still hope for his fourth book, or parties. Then it piggybacked onto whatever trip Daniel had to take. Getting on an airplane became agony. Braving crowded spaces like an airport or a mall or even a supermarket became next to impossible. Finally, when he landed at Chandler College and settled into his perfectly adequate rented house and campus office, he thought maybe familiarity and routine would beat it back into hiding, but no, the fear exhaled and spread out even further, across every mundane aspect of his life. Why? He doesn’t know.
How do you combat something that won’t show its face, something that won’t stand up and declare itself, something that will only insinuate itself and slither soundlessly as it strangles the breath and twists the heart?
Daniel feels entirely defeated by this form of fear. Terrified isn’t so bad, he wrote to Isabelle. Can’t he be honest even with her? Terrified is crippling.
And that thought stops him cold—the word he chose, crippling, because the memory he has is of his father attempting to stand up straight, attempting to walk out of their house under his own power, existing only for the relief his pain medication would bring. “A cripple,” self-declared when he was drunk and reveling in his own pathos.
Daniel picks up the phone. Anything’s better than following that line of logic. He may have his own trouble leaving the house, but there’s something he still can do. He can talk, schmooze, call in a favor without groveling. There must be some college somewhere that will take him in. It takes an afternoon of talking to people he used to know, but finally his phone calls lead him to Harry Axelrod, fellow failed novelist, former drinking buddy from his early years in New York, and current chair of the English Department at Colorado Plains College in Colorado Springs, wherever that is. Harry can offer him a spot for a semester—one of his teachers is out on maternity leave.
“Sold,” says Daniel, grateful. He’ll worry about the semester after that when it comes.
He tells Stefan they’re moving to Colorado.
“How are you going to get there?” is his son’s first question. “I mean physically get there.”
“You’ll drive me.”
“Whoa! Road trip!”
“Exactly,” Daniel says grimly, anticipating the fifteen hours alone in the car with his son as Stefan fairly dances around the room in anticipation of the same.
CHAPTER SEVEN
September melted into October, then November began, and Isabelle was afraid of the amount of happiness she felt. Can this be real? she asked herself at random quiet moments. Often, while watching Casey sleep beside her, sprawled on his stomach, his face stripped of all but his innate sweetness, she felt compelled to put the flat of her palm on his warm back in order to feel his breath flow into and out of his lungs. Is this real?
One early morning as they were hiking through the centuries-old redwoods of Muir Woods, Isabelle simply stopped, needing to look around her, needing to see so she could remember. Arrows of sunshine, shot from hundreds of feet above them, pierced the haze that clung to the tops of the trees. A living cathedral. Hushed. Simple.
“What is it?” Casey asked her.
“I need to remember how happy I am.”
“Oh, baby,” he said and took her hand, “there’ll be lots more.”
On a Sunday morning in early November, bundled in sweaters over pajamas, their feet in heavy wool socks propped up on the deck railing, sipping their morning coffee, waking up slowly, not a word being spoken, their eyes watching the fog lift across the bay, Isabelle felt it again—Can this be real?
Everything else had fallen away, and rather than feeling unmoored, she felt weightless, able to skim along air currents and never fall.
Casey was a revelation to her. The men she was used to talked and talked. They complained and needled and pugnaciously pursued arguments. Nate would never stop his relentless words until she had agreed that, yes, he had a point, yes, he had figured it all out. And her father, who had spent the summer constructing one long monologue, was always talking, always making his case, always needing her to listen. Even her brothers, whom she adored, created consta
nt noise, shouting over each other, the twins in some kind of inexhaustible contest of one-upmanship since the day they could talk until Aaron, patient Aaron, would shout at them, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
Words all around her—male sounds, arguments, and grievances. The static of her life. But Casey could be quiet. He could use two words where others would need a paragraph. He would rather touch than talk. Suddenly life was quieter. Peace crept in and took up residence inside her, a tiny corner of stillness, and she was grateful.
What she didn’t realize until it was too late was that there was a price to pay for all this tranquillity. There was a list of things Casey had neglected to mention—that he had no home, that they soon had to vacate this hilltop cottage they were living in, that he had no clue where he was going next. But more important, what he didn’t tell her was that he could be whisked away in a heartbeat, out of the country, across the world for months at a time. He didn’t talk about that possibility until the call came on November 15.
Of course Isabelle had asked Casey about his work. He was proud to tell her about Global Hope, about how they were among the first responders when any disaster struck—when earthquakes devastated villages or hurricanes swept away houses or floods wiped out farmland or famine threatened children. The nonprofit was homegrown, started in Berkeley in the 1960s, when everyone believed they could make the world a better place. Casey believed it still, he told Isabelle. He believed in his obligation to do so.
“I was raised that way,” he says simply one Sunday morning as they are making their way from their tree house down the hill, crossing College Avenue to Bancroft and then down to Goldman Field for one of Casey’s soccer games.
As they walk, Casey has his duffel bag slung over his left shoulder and holds Isabelle’s hand in his right. He doesn’t continue. “I was raised that way” seems enough of an explanation for him.
But Isabelle wants to know more. “Your parents?” she prompts.
“My parents walk the walk,” he says with a shrug. “My dad runs an alternative school in Oakland. Very progressive, sort of Montessoriesque without the dogma.”
“And your mom?” Isabelle thinks quickly of her own mother, who had never been “well enough” to hold a job, the threat of a migraine always hovering somewhere behind her disillusioned eyes.
“She teaches English as a second language at a night school for migrant workers. During the day she lobbies for immigrants’ rights.”
“Wow,” Isabelle says quietly, frankly intimidated. These people all do such good in the world. What has she or anyone in her large, extended, rowdy, raucous Rothman family done that approaches the good Casey’s family does?
“On the other hand…” Casey adds with a grin, to let her know his next comments are meant benevolently, although Isabelle would have taken them that way. She hasn’t experienced a moment yet of meanness or pettiness from Casey.
“You walk into their house and it’s like you’re having a flashback. I mean, you will see actual tie-dye and a framed Woodstock poster and a lava lamp in the bedroom. The sixties have never ended as far as my parents are concerned.”
“But that’s not a bad thing, is it, if they do such good in the world?”
“My sister, Mimi, thinks all three of us are embarrassing.”
“She does?”
“Yep.”
And Isabelle has to ask, “Because of the tie-dye?”
“She thinks we’ve drunk the Kool-Aid or something. That we’re mouthing platitudes. Like we’re as cringe-worthy as recycled clothes or something.” He stops talking, and then the sly grin starts again and Isabelle has no idea what he’s going to say next. “She married an investment banker. They live in Connecticut, and she voted for George H. W. Bush in the last election. My parents had apoplexy. I think that was the point.”
When they reach the soccer stadium, Isabelle spots Deepti immediately. Although she sits demurely in the bleachers, hands folded in her lap, waiting for Isabelle and the game to begin, her aqua sari, the only pop of color amid the steel-gray slats, screams “Here I am!”
Casey seems to stand taller as they cross the grass field, to smile more broadly, to fill up with expectation. Isabelle can tell how eager he is for the game to start.
“I’ll see you afterward,” she tells him, preparing to slip away, to join Deepti and the scattering of spectators in the bleachers, but Casey grabs her wrist and brings her to him. They stand face-to-face, their bodies touching in all the right places, and Isabelle feels a surge of heat.
“Wish me luck?”
“Do you even need it?”
Casey puts his arms around her and kisses her with real hunger. And she kisses him back, her arms around his neck, her hands in his long blond hair, matching his eagerness. She doesn’t care who sees. And then they smile at each other, because they share the only secret worth having in the whole world—that love is wonderful!
“Now we’ll win,” he tells her.
Isabelle, with Deepti beside her, settles in to watch the teams play. Paying attention is serious business for both women, and their eyes never leave the field. They might miss something otherwise—a play, a clue about their men, a secret revealed only through the immediacy of the game.
“How constant he is,” Deepti murmurs as Sadhil blocks his second goal attempt.
“Yes,” Isabelle agrees. “Sadhil was made to be a goalie.” To stand and protect.
“And how fast Casey is,” Deepti adds, to be evenhanded.
“Exactly!” That’s what Isabelle wants—the thrill in her blood as she watches Casey fly down the field as if his life depended on his team’s next goal.
After the game, which the Berkeley Breakers win by a score of 1–0, Sadhil as proud of his stops as Casey is of passing for their one goal, the two couples walk to the Indian Oven Café, a few blocks away on Shattuck, for an early dinner.
It is only on these Sunday nights that Isabelle feels the least bit in touch with the rest of the world. As they walk, she’s reminded that there are other people talking, laughing, pushing their children in strollers, going about their lives—the rest of humanity she hasn’t given even a fleeting thought to in the intervening week. They pass a copy store, a Laundromat, a small grocery with pears and apples mounded in symmetrical piles out front, an Italian bakery closing for the night. Making a left turn at the corner newsstand, Isabelle catches glimpses in the Sunday papers of the fallout from the congressional elections. Newt Gingrich and his “Contract with America” had swept Republicans into the majority in both houses. Bill Clinton’s policies had been repudiated, but right now, in this bubble she’s living in, Isabelle isn’t interested. Casey has his arm around her shoulders. She’s watching his animated face as he and Sadhil recap the game they just won. There’s a whole world in that lovely sunburned face.
Deepti and Sadhil, Hindu and vegetarian, order eggplant bharta, dal makhani, naan, and aloo gobi. Isabelle orders tandoori chicken for Casey and herself. She’s learned that Casey will eat anything, or rather, that he doesn’t care what he eats. Many days, she now knows, he would forget to eat if she didn’t remind him, or he’d have cereal for dinner, standing up in the kitchen, shoveling it into his mouth quickly so he can get on to something much more interesting—a movie they want to see, or a friend who’s playing at a coffeehouse in Oakland, or the 49ers game on TV. Anything to do with sports takes precedence over eating.
So Isabelle has begun to cook for him, something she did for Nate but only with a secret resentment. With Casey it feels as natural as waking up next to him each morning and curling into his body to fall asleep at night. The two of them in an effortless rhythm, Isabelle has come to feel, of give-and-take that forms a perfect circle, smooth and continual and impenetrable.
At dinner, Casey and Sadhil talk about their Global Hope trips. It’s the only time Casey builds paragraphs of long sentences leading to the next paragraph, as though the ardor he feels for his work fuels his tongue.
Isabell
e listens as Casey explains how he and Sadhil met—on a mission to Erzincan, Turkey, in 1992 after a 6.9-magnitude earthquake had killed hundreds and injured thousands and created 50,000 homeless people.
“All across the city there was nothing but concrete rubble, some pieces as big as this table, piled up on top of each other. Apartment houses, office buildings, so we knew there were people underneath all that, but we didn’t have much equipment. This was less than forty-eight hours after the quake.”
“Everywhere you looked, men were pulling at the boulders with their bare hands,” Sadhil adds.
“I was working at this four-story apartment building that had been totally destroyed. You couldn’t even see what the building had once been.”
“There was snow on the ground. It was so cold,” Sadhil interjects, “and these men didn’t have gloves or shovels or any kind of equipment. Just their bare hands. And they were bloodied and raw and nobody cared, they just kept digging. Casey was right beside them.”
“And then I heard it, or I thought I heard it.” Casey takes over the telling. “A faint sort of moaning coming from somewhere underneath all that debris.”
“A child,” Sadhil says.
Deepti looks at Isabelle, her expression suddenly troubled—a child buried alive in stone.
“We started to open up a small hole where we thought we had heard the sounds. It seemed to take forever, but we had to be careful. We didn’t want to start a slide.” Casey shakes his head as he remembers, not liking what he’s about to say.
Isabelle’s breath catches—she doesn’t want the child to be dead, but Casey’s face, as he remembers, is somber.
“We unearthed a hand. A tiny hand, the whole thing smaller than half my palm.” He shows them his palm so they can envision just how tiny the hand was. Then he continues the telling. “It didn’t move. The men were talking to the child in Turkish, but we heard nothing back, and the hand didn’t reach for us or grab on. And my heart dropped. We had taken too long. We had been too careful. A minute sooner, maybe thirty seconds. When did the child stop moaning? It was impossible to know.”
Surprise Me Page 9