Surprise Me

by Deena Goldstone

  Well, that tells you something, Daniel admonishes himself, about just where you fit on the sliding scale of important people in her life.

  So instead of Isabelle’s eager face in front of him, he has Corinne Berlinger and her jingle-bell sweatshirt and eight other faces that could be mug shots for terminal boredom.

  Of course, when he’s not facing these nine objectionable faces, he wonders if the fault might be in him. How do you teach writing when you don’t believe writing can be taught? That’s the dilemma. That’s probably at the root of the problem, more than the sort of students he has before him. The blame, Daniel confesses to himself in his solitary moments, in all likelihood is his. But the result is the same: his students don’t want to be here and he doesn’t want to be, either. Pitiful. He’s landed himself in a pitiful situation.

  “There are two grades on your papers,” Daniel tells his class as he passes back the short stories, “one for the story and the one underneath is your class grade. If you want to discuss either, you know my office hours—Fridays from two to four, although I suspect that most of you will be on your way home for Christmas by tomorrow afternoon.” Daniel grins at his students. “It almost seems like I planned it that way.” But not a one smiles back at him. Nobody is interested in his small joke. Isabelle would have responded. She would have tilted her head to her left shoulder, a small grin playing at the corners of her lips; on to him, understanding immediately his desire not to discuss grades ever, at any time. He hates summing people up by a letter. She knows that.

  But none of these students understand irony. Oh, kill me now, Daniel thinks as the members of English 452 push back their chairs, gather their backpacks and puffy down jackets, and leave the room without looking at him. Only Corinne has something to say.

  “Merry Christmas, Mr. Jablonski.”

  “You, too, Corinne.”

  “I’m going to look at my grade after Christmas. I do that with all my grades, because there’s the chance, you know, that they might ruin my holiday.”

  Daniel nods. He thinks that’s a good idea. He should say something encouraging to her, he knows, even if it’s a lie. It’s the holiday season after all—“Good will to all” and the rest of those sentiments. But he can’t. She’s a nice girl but a terrible writer, and he can’t bring himself to lie. She leaves empty-handed, empty-hearted, and he knows it and she knows it.

  It occurs to him as Stefan walks him home across the campus, past the many massive red brick buildings, that he has become an even lesser version of himself. More judgmental, grumpier, far less hopeful than he was that last semester at Chandler, when he had Isabelle’s visits to look forward to once a week and her ever-evolving and finally lovely prose.

  The two men are bundled against the Colorado cold. It’s the week before Christmas and the gray sky promises snow that may or may not get there—the weather so unpredictable every season of the year here. The temperature is plunging as the day wanes, and both wear heavy jackets and wool scarves wound around their necks and hats in deference to the stiff wind. The trees are leafless and stark against the rapidly darkening sky, and Daniel wishes briefly and intensely for the bright, warm Southern California December days when the light is sharp-edged and challenging and the temperature might reach 80 degrees, even in the depths of winter. Better to count his steps than wish for what he cannot have, and so Daniel does. He puts his attention on his heavy boots as they crackle the brittle leaves underfoot and take him closer to the one place he can draw a real breath: his apartment.

  At his side, Stefan chatters nonstop. He’s taken to having opinions about everything, and he gestures widely and often, flinging his arms out, a maestro conducting an imaginary orchestra. It’s as if the majesty of the Rocky Mountains edging the skyline to the west and the vast high plains to their east have translated into an expansiveness in Stefan’s attitude. Gone is the sullen kid who showed up on his doorstep in L.A., the one who could spend days not talking, then explode into bursts of anger and accusation. Now Daniel is living with Arsenio Hall—glib, hyper, relentless.

  Although Stefan can’t quite put all the pieces together to explain why he feels so much better living in Colorado, he knows it has something to do with his dad. Daniel needed him to drive across the deserts of California and Nevada and up the six thousand feet onto the plain where “the Springs” is located. And his dad relies on him to do anything that happens outside their apartment—go to the market, the bank, walk to campus, pick up dinner most nights. Although Stefan wouldn’t use the word, it is accurate to say that he feels competent for the first time in his life. And he has convinced himself that he is crucial to his father’s well-being. “Let’s face it,” Stefan has even said to Daniel, “where would you be without me?”

  And although Daniel felt the accurate answer to that question was, “With maybe some peace and quiet in my life,” he didn’t, of course, say it. Instead he replied with as much equanimity as he could muster. “I don’t know, Stefan. Up shit’s creek without a paddle, I guess.” And Stefan grinned, delighted.

  Their only bone of contention is the fact that Stefan still hasn’t managed to get himself a job in Colorado, either. But I have a job, Stefan thinks but doesn’t say. I take care of you. Instead he tries to be practical.

  “Yeah, but Dad, your schedule is so, like, erratic. I couldn’t really work a job around your comings and goings to campus. You’ve got three classes and they meet on different days, at different times, and then there are your office hours and—”

  “Erratic?” Daniel is amused by Stefan’s choice of word.

  “Yeah, you know, like not the same every day.”

  “I know what erratic means, Stefan. I’m just surprised you do.”

  And Stefan is stung, hurt, and Daniel sees it and tries to backtrack.

  “It’s just not the sort of word you normally use.”

  “You think I’m stupid, don’t you?”

  “No,” Daniel says slowly, although he’s not sure he’s answering honestly. “I think you have untapped potential.” It’s the kindest thing he can think of to say about his son.

  “Yeah, I do.” Stefan is practically glowing. “I’ve got untapped potential.”

  They reach their apartment just as the twilight disappears into night. It’s in a squat brick building four blocks from campus, constructed over a hundred years ago. Square, utilitarian, the architecture far less interesting than the elaborate brick buildings on campus, bleak now that the trees which surround the perimeter are lifeless and bare, but Daniel doesn’t care. For him it is a fortress where he can be safe from the dread that accompanies him anywhere outside its strong walls.

  All Daniel wants now is to be inside his little piece of it, his small, badly furnished, barely clean apartment. Tonight, as Stefan pushes the button for the elevator, Daniel finds he can’t even wait for the old and lumbering machine to descend to the lobby.

  “Taking too long,” he throws over his shoulder as he makes for the stairs, and Stefan immediately turns and follows, concerned because most days Daniel is able to wait.

  “Is it bad today, Dad?”

  Daniel doesn’t answer. He’s concentrating on scaling the last set of stairs and flinging open the door to the third-floor hallway.

  “Dad?”

  Daniel is fumbling with his keys, struggling to open the door to their apartment. There’s no way he’s answering Stefan. There! He’s in, his son behind him watching with worried eyes as Daniel attempts to slow his breathing to a normal level. Stefan has become an expert at reading body language and nonverbal cues that tell him what his father refuses to—how he’s doing, how consumed he is by his own panic.

  “Stop hovering,” Daniel manages to say.

  Stefan takes the hat off Daniel’s head. “Give me your coat.” And his father complies. “Now your scarf.”

  But Daniel is halfway down the hall. Stefan knows where he’s going: into his bedroom, where he’s set up his desk, where his computer is, where so
mehow Daniel feels he can breathe.

  Okay, Stefan knows he’s got maybe half an hour before Daniel comes out of his room, calmer, ready for a beer and the dinner that Stefan has to go out and get. He does so most nights without a murmur of protest. He likes walking the streets. That’s his newest occupation during the days, and almost every day he ends up at the High Plains Ice Hall. Sitting high up in the bleachers, Stefan watches the Olympic ice skating hopefuls who come from all over the world to train there. For hours on end he doesn’t move until she—Mitsuko Kita—skates onto the ice. It’s only then that Stefan makes his way closer to the rink so he can watch her spin and swoop and jump and glide with a grace he finds mesmerizing. Often he’s late to pick up his father because he can’t tear his eyes away from her tiny figure on the vast white ice—so singular, so determined, and so vulnerable all at once. Stefan feels he could watch her forever.

  That’s his skill, he’s decided. He’s a watcher. He notices everything. Every wrong turn of a shoulder, every tight twirl that lasts a split second too long, every toe pick that is an inch off its intended target. He’s taken to bringing a notebook with him and recording all Mitsuko’s triumphs and mistakes, day by day. He has no idea what he’ll do with the results, but his note-taking increases his pleasure in watching and so he continues.

  Of course he hasn’t told his father what he does with his days. He knows him well enough now to know Daniel would have something harsh to say—something about voyeurism, about time wasted, about one more detour Stefan has chosen instead of the right road to success. Especially if Stefan told him that some days, when he can’t stop himself, he follows Mitsuko through the streets of town as she walks home beside her coach, a ramrod-straight Japanese man in his fifties. Every day the older man talks to her during the walks, rapidly, sometimes hitting the palm of one hand with the fist of the other as he explains a point. The young girl listens respectfully, her head dipped in deference, nodding from time to time.

  Stefan doesn’t like this interaction at all. It verges on something unsavory to him, and so he walks behind and makes sure Mitsuko arrives safely at her apartment. Only when her coach leaves her there and continues on, only when the glass front door of the building closes behind the tiny skater and Stefan considers her safely inside, only then does he move on.

  Stefan keeps this private pleasure to himself—the watching, the note-taking, the following. He’s not hurting anyone, is he? And maybe sometime he could even present Mitsuko with his notes. They might help her. They might even add to the likelihood that she will make the Olympic team in 1998, the Nagano Games. That’s all he wants. To be some kind of help.

  On this Thursday night, the pregame show is on for the Denver Nuggets, and Stefan settles himself on the living room couch, a beer in hand, to prepare for the game, which will fill his evening. The play-by-play guy, Drew Goodman, is talking about their rookie guard, Jalen Rose, first-round pick out of the University of Michigan. The Nuggets’ record is nothing to write home about, perched at the break-even mark, but this Rose guy is going to be good, Stefan thinks. He can’t wait for the game to start so he can watch him. Maybe his dad will do delivery tonight so he can watch the whole game without interruption. Yeah, that would be sweet—the Nuggets game, another beer, Chinese food from the Lotus Blossom, and Stefan would be set. He easily acknowledges to himself, if not to his father, that he’s happier than he’s been in a long time.

  Daniel, in his bedroom, sits upright in his desk chair and breathes deeply. Some doctor somewhere, when he was still consulting doctors about his condition, told him he might be able to quiet the panic attacks by deep breathing. It doesn’t work, but Daniel, in desperation each time one hits, tries it anyway. He has no other solution.

  As a distraction he turns on his computer and scrolls through the in-box of his e-mail. Ruthlessly he deletes every message without a familiar name. Some of the deletions could be students whose names he never bothered to learn, but he hasn’t the patience to open each one to find out. And then, in the midst of the spam about refinancing your home and enhancing your penis, he finds Isabelle’s e-mail. The subject line is “Merry Christmas,” and so he almost deletes it. But he doesn’t. He recognizes her e-mail address and opens it instead.

  Daniel,

  I don’t know where you are but that’s the beauty of e-mail. I don’t have to know in order to write to you. I’m thinking of you and hoping that you will have a happy Christmas. My life has taken an unexpected turn. I’m trying to see it as a positive, but I have to confess (especially to you, since I only tell you the truth) that it’s a struggle. I hope you’re not alone this holiday season. It’s the time for family, isn’t it? And I hope you have someone with you.

  Isabelle

  What a melancholy Christmas message. So different from her last e-mails to him, in September, when she seemed to be flying high with optimism and fervor. It’s probably the guy, he thinks. He probably dumped her. That’s what it sounds like to him. The “unexpected turn” part of her message. And the worry that he not be alone, as she probably is.

  Well, that’s what happens in your twenties. You often make a mess of things. He certainly did. Marrying Stephanie because she was available and there and wanted to marry him. Having two children he wasn’t ready to raise. Drinking too much, working construction, on a path to copy his old man’s miserable existence. Desperate. And then finally, when he hit thirty, beginning to write, a decision that saved his life. Too bad the writing can’t save his life now.

  He should tell Isabelle some of this, he thinks, but how to say it so he doesn’t sound condescending? And she didn’t ask for advice. Maybe he should just wish her a merry Christmas and be done with it.

  But he doesn’t want to be done with it. He wants her back in his life, with all the attitude and sauciness and appreciation she brought to him. He wants to matter to someone.

  He hits Reply and begins his e-mail. His breathing slows, his panic recedes.

  Isabelle,

  I’m in Colorado Springs, Colorado, teaching a bunch of dolts. There isn’t one student who can hold a candle to you. My son, Stefan, is with me and he can’t find a job in Colorado either, although to be fair, taking charge of his old man, as he seems to be doing, could be described as a full-time job.

  What happened to that guy you met? The one you wrote me about the last time, who convinced you to stay in Berkeley?

  Daniel thinks about that last paragraph. Is that overstepping some invisible line? Does he have the right, the standing even, to ask her that? He stares out his bedroom window as he ponders. There’s another brick building right next door. Nothing to look at. Nothing to help him decide. Oh, what the hell—he wants to know the answer to his question, so he’s going to leave it right there. She can answer it or not. It’s up to her.

  I hope the Bay Area has turned out to be the place that encourages you to write. Don’t let your gift slip through your fingers.

  Merry Christmas,

  Daniel

  And he hits Send before he can reread it and delete the question he’s dying to have answered.

  Almost immediately he gets Isabelle’s response.

  Daniel,

  There’s been a 7.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Philippines and Casey is there saving lives.

  Isabelle

  Well, that doesn’t tell him what he wants to know, but Daniel leaves it there, already a little embarrassed he asked the question in the first place. Too revealing. Her life has moved on. She’s involved with a guy who sees himself as a hero. Why does Daniel think she’d want anything to do with an old, broken-down writer who can’t even save one life—his own?

  CHAPTER NINE

  Isabelle rented half a bungalow in the flats of Oakland with the last of her summer salary, eking out just enough to cover first and last month’s rent and the security deposit. She found an old wooden house on Marston Street, built in the 1920s and reconfigured into two side-by-side apartments sometime after
that. With its requisite low-pitched, gabled roof and horizontal wood siding, it is a perfect example of the California Craftsman Style which peppers the state. Each unit has its own small front porch held up by stone pedestals. That was the selling point for Isabelle, that quaint front porch with its white wooden railing, sitting four wide steps up from the street.

  The living room overlooks the porch and has a large fixed window bordered by two smaller double-hung windows that open from the top and bottom. There is an eat-in kitchen with a window along the driveway, two small bedrooms, and a pink-and-black–tiled bathroom on the other side of the house. Isabelle and the tenant in the other unit, Mrs. Hershfeld, share the backyard, but so far Isabelle has seen her neighbor only when she hobbled out to hang a few pieces of hand-washed underwear on the ancient clothesline positioned behind the garage.

  “It’s for you, too,” the older woman called as she struggled up the back stairs, her shockingly bright orange hair set in curlers, a cigarette packed into a lip so she can use both hands to haul herself onto the back stoop. Isabelle waved from her bedroom window, the one that overlooks the backyard, and smiled. They hadn’t yet formally introduced themselves, but Mrs. Hershfeld wasn’t standing on any ceremony. She wanted Isabelle to know she was welcome to hang her dripping intimates on the two skinny, sagging lines.

  It took Isabelle about a week at the Hotel Durant without any sort of communication from Casey to realize she’d better make some decisions on her own.

  I have to find us somewhere to live—that’s how she thought about it, without ever discussing it with Casey. Where can the two of us live? The classic bungalow on Marston, much rented but still adorable as far as Isabelle was concerned, would do perfectly.

  Once her telephone service has been activated, Isabelle makes her way back up the hill to Orson Pratt’s house to give him the new, and now permanent, number. She knows she could simply call and deliver the information, but there’s a pull toward that house. She was so happy there. Bits and pieces of her life with Casey still reside there. She decides to walk up the hill. Seeing it all again, being there, will reinforce the necessary belief that it was all real.