by Peter Benson
‘I’ve got the book you’ll need.’
She laughed and took my arm again. ‘That’s what I like about you, Michael. You’re practical…’
‘I have to be.’
‘But that doesn’t stop you thinking. It’s a rare combination. Bob had it. He made me think.’
‘Think as long as you want,’ I said, and I laid my hand on hers. ‘Stay as long as you want.’
‘Staying’s not as easy as thinking.’
‘Then don’t think about it.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
I said, ‘You could find yourself here.’
‘Now you sound like a Californian.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘And so are you,’ I said, meaning it, but the words were taken by the wind. Maybe she heard them, maybe she ignored them; whatever. She lit another cigarette and tipped her head back, and while I prayed so hard my lips moved, she closed her eyes to the day.
15
I was in the garden when I heard the cars. Dan came first. Jacob followed in a blue Mercedes. He drove with one hand on the wheel and his head sticking out of the window, edging around the potholes, slowly on to the verge and back again. Dan rolled along in neutral.
Elizabeth walked up from the house, laughed and said, ‘You wouldn’t think an asshole could drive a stick shift, would you?’ I put my hoe down, and wiped my hands on my trousers.
Dan stopped behind the ruined terrace, climbed out of his car and rested against the bonnet. He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and shook his head with meaning.
Jacob parked behind him, removed his sunglasses and sat for a moment, staring straight ahead. He did not look well. Elizabeth and I strolled down from the garden together, past the house, across the yard. The chickens scratched, the cat woke up, yawned and went back to sleep.
Jacob stepped out of his car, smoothed his trousers and said, ‘Mother…’
‘Jacob!’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Hello…’
‘And what the hell are you wearing?’
‘… Jacob.’
‘Yeah?’ he said.
‘How are you?’ she said, and she kissed his cheeks.
‘Bushed.’
‘I’m sorry…’
He put his hands on his hips, looked around and sighed. ‘This is Baja again, isn’t it?’
‘No, Jacob, it isn’t,’ and ‘This is Michael,’ she said, and I put out my hand.
Jacob stared at it. ‘Michael. Michael or Bob?’
‘Michael,’ I said.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘It’s just you freeloaders all look the same to me.’
Jacob had fat hands, thick black hair and a wet moustache. His eyes were loaded with disappointment, his lips were moist, he had spent too long in the sun. His nose was full of blood. I reached out, took his hand and shook it before he had the chance to back off. I said, ‘Welcome to Port Juliet.’
‘You don’t want to welcome me anywhere,’ he said.
‘Whatever…’ I said.
‘Try and be nice,’ said Elizabeth.
He grunted.
Dan coughed, tossed his cigarette away and shuffled towards us. He was wearing the same clothes and the same expression he always wore; half removed from what was going on, brooding on a longing or a misplaced word. A girl he wanted back, a letter he wanted to write? The job he hated? He said, ‘Are you going to need me any more?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Jacob took out his wallet. ‘What do I owe you?’
‘Fifteen fifty.’
‘What?’
‘Fifteen fifty.’ Dan didn’t blink. His eyelids drooped, and he stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, his right knee thrust slightly forward.
‘You’re kidding! Christ!’ Jacob didn’t open the wallet. ‘What for?’
‘The taxi.’
‘Pay the man,’ said Elizabeth.
‘But what’s he done? Shown me the way from whatever that other place was and, what was it, five miles? Twenty bucks? Forget it!’
Elizabeth took out her own purse, gave Dan the money and said, ‘Thanks…’ Dan looked at her with a blank, almost dead expression.
Jacob said, ‘What a rip-off.’
Dan turned and faced him, and for a moment I thought he was going to explode. His arms tensed, and his eyes widened, but then he turned, waved his hand over his head and without a word climbed into his car and drove away.
I offered to make tea and put some sugared biscuits on a plate but Jacob said ‘I’m not staying’ to me and ‘Get your things’ to Elizabeth.
‘Why?’ she said.
‘You’re coming with me.’
‘When?’
‘Now.’
‘I don’t think so.’
I think he laughed, but it was hard to tell. He made a chuckling sound and curled his lips, and displayed his teeth, but his eyes didn’t crease or show any sparkle. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘what is it this time?’
‘What do you mean?’
He looked at me and I knew that I would hit him. I tried to stop myself but I could not. I got the old tension in my head, and an increasing heat. My hands made fists and I rooted my feet. He was about four feet away, standing to my right. Elizabeth was to my left. His nose shone. He said, ‘What’s he got on you?’ as if I wasn’t there.
‘Who?’
‘Your latest friend.’ He said ‘latest’ slowly, rolling the word around his mouth like a nut. He spat it out.
‘Michael?’ she said, and she moved to me and took my arm. ‘You’ve got nothing on me, have you?’
I shook my head.
‘But I think you’ve shown me something,’ she said, ‘that I’d forgotten.’
Jacob shifted on his feet, his eyes bulged a bit and he said, ‘Like what, for God’s sake?’
‘Like this!’ She looked around.
‘You mean like Malibu except there’re no houses, no people, no weather. Nothing.’
‘You can’t see?’
‘What?’
‘How can I explain?’
‘Try, Mother.’
A lark began to sing, and another, and eight more tumbling through the sky. Their songs oiled the air, and combed it. ‘The sun’s shining…’
‘Hey!’ He leered. He had very regular teeth and thin lips, like the edges of a fresh cut. ‘The sun only shines in California. Everywhere else it just glows a bit.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
‘Try me.’
I’ll try you. You have a mother and she loves you and you come down my road to my house and raise your voice with your Mercedes parked badly in front of the ruin of the house where your grandmother was born and you don’t even ask about her. You don’t wonder that she froze in that cottage through winters you couldn’t imagine. You don’t look at me. You don’t think. You’ve done nothing, gone nowhere, seen nothing and my vision was going, slipping, gone. Head. Feet. I said nothing.
She said, ‘Look at this place,’ and she spread her arms.
‘I’m looking.’
‘It was where your grandmother was born, Jacob. Mary Green.’ She pointed to the terrace. ‘She lived in one of those cottages…’
‘And had the sense to leave.’
‘And always regretted it. She always planned a return.’
‘Really? So what? You’re doing it for her?’
Elizabeth nodded. ‘You could say that. For her… and me.’
‘You?’
‘No one can touch me here.’
‘Baja…’ he hissed.
‘I’m free. I can do what I want, and nobody has to know.’
‘Like do what?’
‘Dig the garden, mend a fence, feed the chickens…’
‘Mend a fence? You want to mend a fence?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
‘You never mended a fence in your life.’
‘So I’ll start.’
‘Okay,’ he said, and with
a deep breath, ‘but at home. You can have all the freedom you want.’ Another deep one. ‘If we’ve been down on you that’s our fault. Yeah. We’ll make some changes.’
‘You haven’t been down on me. And there aren’t any fences at home.’
‘We could buy some.’
She laughed. ‘No, Jacob, we couldn’t. You can’t buy fences like the ones here. They’re special.’
‘And he’s special, is he?’
‘You don’t meet people like Michael in Malibu.’
‘No,’ he said ‘You have to go to South Central.’
‘You’re not going to listen, are you?’
‘I’ll listen, but I won’t believe you. I don’t believe you believe yourself. How long’s it taken you to get back to where you are now? Thirty years? Thirty years of wondering whether you can pay the rent, buy the groceries, and now you’re going to blow it. How long have you waited for this?’
‘What are you worried about, Jacob? Me blowing it or you not getting your slice?’
‘We’re not talking about me.’
‘You just don’t get it, do you? Your grandmother, my life. My needs. You know I have needs…’
He turned towards me, grinned and said, ‘Selfish, isn’t she?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘It speaks.’
I hit him. I leapt on that man and started to pound him with his moustache and his very well-pressed trousers and his blue shirt buttoned to his throat. White socks. Beige slip-on shoes with gilt detail and we’re on the ground and I’m punching his chest so he’s blowing breath like this is it, I’m going to die, I won’t see another morning, I’ll never drink again, this man is killing me at the edge of a country I can’t spell.
I’m breaking sweat. I can see my fists going slowly like I’m in a film and someone’s going to tell me that’s it, stop, don’t do it any more, you’ve made your point. I can hear myself telling him to show some respect, be polite, wake up, but I know I’ve made a mistake, I shouldn’t be doing this. But it’s Odessa again and he’s me, and I’m giving him the beating he deserves, the one he must take because he treats his mother like shit, he only wants her for what she can give him, he would forget her tomorrow if he could. He needs this. Elizabeth grabbed my shirt and pulled me back.
She had no strength in her arms but she could shout like you would not believe, right in my ear as I’m taking a chunk out of the man’s shoulder with my teeth. He tastes sweet. ‘Michael! No!’ I turned to look at her and he scratched my cheek. ‘Leave him!’ I put my hand over his face and pushed him away. His head hit the ground, he let out a gasp of air, went limp and stopped struggling. I slapped him once more, stood up, straightened, took a handkerchief from my pocket and held it to my face. I turned to Elizabeth, wiped my brow and said, ‘It can’t fight.’
He wheezed, ‘You’re finished.’
‘I haven’t started…’
He pushed himself up. ‘You’re a maniac.’
‘If I need to be.’ I looked at Elizabeth and she was shaking, looking at her son, then at me, then back at him. She went for a cigarette.
He brushed his trousers and fingered his shoulder. He took a step, winced and said to her, ‘You know how to pick them.’
She said nothing.
‘Are you coming?’
‘No.’
He took a deep breath, his fists balled, his shoulders tensed and he leapt towards me. I stepped back and took his arms, twisted him around and pushed him away.
‘Enough!’ she yelled.
‘Not a chance!’ he shouted. His legs were shaking, his eyes were popping. Sweat ran down his cheeks and filled his moustache. ‘Not a chance,’ he repeated, ‘no way!’, and he turned towards his car. I took a step towards him but Elizabeth stood between us. ‘Jacob,’ she said. ‘Please. Listen to me…’
‘No!’ He wheeled around. ‘You listen to me! I’ll tell you!’ He pointed at me. ‘And I’ll tell you. I’m sure you want to know all about Baja…’
‘I know about Baja.’
‘And Thailand?’ He gulped air. ‘Goa? How about it? British Columbia?’
Elizabeth said, ‘Nothing happened in British Columbia.’ She turned away. ‘And you weren’t in Thailand.’
He nodded at me. ‘You know she’s a serial back-to-basics freak?’ Saliva had accumulated at the corners of his mouth. ‘Oh, yeah!’ He was raving. ‘She could have been one of the greats, she could have been up there, she didn’t have to be remembered as the blonde in Missing You, but no, she kept meeting guys like you in places like this.’
‘I did not keep meeting…’
‘Sure you did. Yeah. You kept thinking that the simple life was for you. But you always ended up running home, didn’t you, Mother?’ He tongued the corners of his mouth. ‘You always found something to miss.’
‘What do you know?’ she said. ‘What the hell do you know about what I missed? Or what I wanted?’
‘Go,’ I said.
‘Go?’ He laughed.
‘Yes.’
He looked at his mother, took a step towards her; she backed away. She held up her hands, palms to the front, and said, ‘Leave me alone.’ He pointed at me, squinted, grabbed his shoulder and winced. He opened his mouth to say something. I watched his eyes swivel, and his tongue moved, but no sound came out. He looked through me, staring at some spot beyond the ruins. The air froze and split. I waited, Elizabeth waited, but then he turned instead and went to his car. He put on his sunglasses and drove away from Port Juliet at speed, through the potholes without slowing, and we stood and listened until the place was quiet again, and the air calmed.
The air settled, clouds puffed over the sea and the guano on the offshore stacks glowed in the setting sun. The tide laid its cargo along the shore: lumps of wood, weed, empty shells and a plastic bottle. The sand was smooth and spongy. We walked slowly. My arms ached, my back twinged and my knuckles bled. Gloria ran ahead. The cat sat and watched us from the ruins. I picked up a stick. It was shaped like a horse’s head.
‘I can’t deny it,’ she said. ‘There’s truth in what he said. But it was only Baja that made me want to live a quieter life. Those other places, they meant nothing. It was Baja that held me.’ She stopped and looked towards the ruins. ‘And this place. My mother’s place…’
‘I shouldn’t have hit him.’ I rubbed the small of my back. ‘I’m getting too old for that sort of thing.’
‘He had it coming.’
‘I haven’t been in a fight for years.’ I felt my ribs, and ran the tips of my fingers over my chin. I was cut, but the bleeding had stopped. ‘But I couldn’t stand and listen to him talk to you like that. You’re his mother.’
‘That’s his problem. He blames me. He might have a point. I was never around for him, not when he needed me, I know that.’
‘I wasn’t around when my mother needed me. But I didn’t treat her like that…’
‘Rich children; they’re different. They don’t have reasons, just excuses. Excuses and blame.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Do?’
‘Does he work?’
She laughed. ‘He thinks he does, but he doesn’t have to. That’s my problem, trying to pay off the guilt with money. It’s the way I punish myself for the neglect. My son… he calls himself an actor. Did you ever see Booth and Bother?’
‘What was it?’
‘A sit-com.’
‘No.’
‘He had a walk-on in that. He was a policeman. Had to walk in on Booth and his girlfriend and tell him that Bother was lost. Bother was a dog.’ She shook her head. ‘That’s the only job he’s ever had. He can’t walk right, let alone act. People have told him but he’s stubborn. He says he’s going to make it.’
We had reached the end of the beach, and sat down on the scattered rocks that lay at the foot of the cliff. ‘Is he?’ I said. A group of oyster-catchers jigged along the tideline, running from the waves, running back to them, poking in the sand, running away a
gain.
‘Not a chance.’
‘Will he come back?’
‘Sure.’
‘And will you go?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe he’s right. Maybe I always find something to miss, but I still feel I could be all right here, I could get rid of so much shit. Sometimes I think about the orange groves, when I was a kid, and I can smell rain on the blossom, and I think that was the only time I was truly happy. A bowl of soup for lunch, a piece of bread. Living with my mother, living with someone I loved and who loved me back.’
‘Unconditional love, that’s a great thing. And honest work. Knowing, feeling you’ve earned your money. Slow drinks, easy evenings. Evenings like this. You don’t have to prove anything in a place like this. You just live, and life takes care of itself, doesn’t it? Bumper stickers don’t come into it.’
‘Bumper stickers?’
‘Mottos. Aphorisms.’
‘They don’t come into it if you can afford to ignore them. If you’ve got the money. Your mother’s life didn’t take care of itself…’
‘No, it didn’t. I know. Different times. Hard times, not our times, Michael.’
The way you said my name touched me. My name had never sounded so sweet. I wanted to kiss your hands and say that this was the easiest evening of my life, and that you could take care of your life in my company for as long as you wanted.
I wanted you to say it again, to say that I had showed you something you’d forgotten.
Wanted to say the same, wanted to hear my voice like a bell in my head.
Ringing, not tolling.
Wanted to drown.
Do you remember the oyster-catchers? They were feeding along the beach?
Nervously.
Along the tideline.
‘Oh,’ I said, but nothing else. My mouth felt full of cotton. I dipped my fingers in a rock pool and touched an anemone. Its fronds tingled, contracted and folded away. A little fish darted away from my shadow, and another. Gloria sat and watched the clifftop. She narrowed her eyes and held her mouth slightly open. Rabbits were coming out to graze the edges and verges. She made a move and the oyster-catchers blew away, darting towards the point, crying and turning over the cliffs and the disappearing rabbits. The dog stood still.