Wildwood

by Drusilla Campbell

  “You’re the one who speaks Spanish.” Teddy sat forward and Jeanne slipped a second pillow behind his head. “Besides, if they don’t like the work, they can quit. It’s not like there’s a shortage of wetbacks.”

  Jeanne looked at her husband a long moment.

  “Sorry, old girl,” he said. “It’s this headache.”

  She returned to the dressing room; and, despite the drought, ran the cold water a few seconds and splashed her face until it tingled. She patted it dry and applied a light sheen of lipstick to her wide mouth. She noted that the lines on either side, the parentheses, were deepening and so were those between her green eyes—eyes like peeled grapes, her brother used to tease. She must frown more than she realized. A little foundation might conceal them but lipstick was the only makeup she wore. When she was a teenager, she’d come home with five dollars’ worth of Tangee cosmetics, and her mother’s inebriated scolding still rang in her mind. A woman demeans her sex when she paints her face.

  In the bedroom again she asked Teddy, “So what are your plans?”

  “If I can get up later, I will. That’s about the best I can promise.”

  Jeanne stood at the door. “I’ll bring you back some tapes from the library.”

  “You’re a saint, Jeanne. What would I do without you?”

  In the weeks following Billy Phillips’s funeral Liz had thought of Bluegang hundreds of times; in a way he was always in her mind in the same way she was always breathing whether she thought about it or not. She had told herself that what happened at Bluegang was an accident, a terrible misstep; and it wasn’t her fault, it was Hannah who pushed him and Jeanne who insisted they say nothing. But that was where her memory came unhinged and sometimes Liz felt like she had pushed Billy Phillips down onto the rocks herself.

  Time’s passage rounded off the sharp angles of memory but it didn’t sink to the bottom of her consciousness, it never eroded. It was there like a stone in the shoe, a toothache, cramps, but she learned to ignore it. In time she became good at this—especially after she turned thirteen and got into trouble for smoking down by the old henhouse and kissing Eric Margolis behind the youth center. Her life crowded with new people and ideas and things she knew she should not do—but did anyway. Pretty soon she was kissing a lot of boys and her parents didn’t seem to notice so she kept on doing it. Making good grades: that was all that mattered to them. In history she and Jeanne and Hannah read about the Nonintercourse Act, collapsed in giggles, and got sent to detention.

  But even when she wasn’t thinking of him, Billy Phillips was with Liz, and she was pretty sure it was the same for Hannah and Jeanne because sometimes in the middle of an ordinary moment—sitting on the swings at the park, drinking Cokes at the Burger Pit—Hannah’s expression suddenly turned grave and vacant. Her body stayed where it was and she kept on talking, but it was obvious that in her mind she was somewhere else and Liz knew where. It was the same with Jeanne, even tough-minded Jeanne.

  The worst of it was, there was nowhere to hide from the memory of what they had done. Or not done. Liz just wasn’t sure about guilt and innocence anymore. Reading was no distraction, not even a really good novel like Marjorie Morningstar. And in the middle of a movie she would start to see things on the screen that she knew weren’t really there. A boy tumbling down a hill. A coyote snuffling around a body.

  For a while she had been desperate to talk about it, but when she did, Hannah looked at her like she’d suddenly begun to speak Swahili.

  Once Liz started up, “You know what happened at Bluegang? . . .” The three of them had been sitting on the edge of the fishpond in front of the high school wearing their roller skates. It was autumn and still warm. They wore shorts and cotton blouses. “Do you guys ever think? . . .”

  As if they were dancers set to move on cue, Hannah and Jeanne had stood up and skated away without glancing back at her. Liz could not forget the sight of their narrow backs and swinging shoulders moving farther and farther away, leaving her behind.

  After that she kept her mouth shut and gradually she thought less about Bluegang and more about school and boys and clothes. A hundred memories a day became a dozen and then once or twice a week, and after that she went for long stretches without remembering. Occasionally she wondered if the process of forgetting was the same for her friends and supposed it must be, but she knew if she asked them they would skate away again. And what if they stayed away?

  They were teenagers and life irresistibly happened all around them constantly, a dance they had to be half-dead not to join in. The arms of the world had opened up and swept them into lives where everything was a challenge or an adventure or a puzzle. Once in a while Liz saw old Mrs. Phillips and Bluegang came back to her. At such times she thought less of Billy’s death than she did of her failure to do the right thing. When her parents asked Can we depend on you, Liz? she always said they could but knew it was a lie.

  High school was a ball: high grades and student body offices, kissing Mario Bacci, smoking Marlboros in the upstairs girls’ bathroom, breaking rules when they could and just for the fun of it. They went to college—seventy-eight percent of the Rinconada graduating class did. Hannah married a doctor and bought a house on Casabella Road and raised two children. Jeanne married her college sweetheart and made a national reputation as an educator. And Liz grew up and led a disjointed peripatetic life and kept on breaking rules in small ways. She became a successful translator of modestly successful books and lived in France, as she had always wanted. She never spoke of Bluegang to anyone until the night, decades afterwards, when she woke, crying, because a coyote had Billy Phillips’s icy hand in its mouth and then it was her ankle it held and she couldn’t break away or cry for help because she couldn’t breathe.

  As the flight from Miami taxied into place at San Jose Airport, Liz rewound the tape she had been listening to—Gregorian chants, soothing as tranquilizers. She slipped the Walkman into her oversized canvas tote, stood and inched her way down the aisle toward the exit.

  She felt her airport demeanor take possession: a longer stride and straighter back, prouder head, expression not excited, never excited, but anticipatory, expectant, busy-busy-busy. She knew the other passengers and the people lined up at the airport windows watched her as she strode across the tarmac between the plane and the terminal. Gerard said they watched because she looked like Someone. A woman just back from someplace thrilling, en route to somewhere even better. Though no longer young and never beautiful—her nose was long, a little hooked, and her forehead too high—she attracted more attention now than ever. Gerard said she carried herself with distinction—which was also pretty amusing since she had never felt in the least distinctive. If she had, she would not have had to create her airport personality in the first place.

  Once in Heathrow Airport a teenaged girl had asked for her autograph. She signed Amelia Earhart and the girl had said, “I just love your show.”

  Hannah waited behind the barrier. Her round youthful face beamed at Liz through the glass, glowing with health and excitement. She wore a long cotton skirt and a roomy Shaker sweater the color of orange sherbet and her feet were laced into leather espadrilles. A thick braid overpowered her willful silver blond hair and hung to the middle of her back. Exotic bead and turquoise earrings dangled halfway to her shoulders. She looked like a rich grown-up hippie.

  They waved, ran and fell into each other’s arms. Let’s not talk, Liz thought. Let’s not spoil this.

  In the car there was suddenly too much to say and no easy place to start so Liz filled up the space with talk about the guest house in Belize, her friends, the way she and Gerard lived.

  “While I’m gone he’s starting the new kitchen and that’ll make life much easier. Trying to feed a dozen hungry tourists breakfast and dinner on a gas stove with two burners is a nightmare. When I get back there’ll be a new Aga stove—new to us, anyway; actually we’re buying it from a pair of old British queens; one of them’s sick so they’ve
decided to go back to England. And while I was in Miami I ordered a double refrigerator with a huge freezer. Plus a bunch of modular cupboards and some Formica. Bright red, can you believe that? Remember when the stuff only came in speckled and sand? God willing it all gets on the right ship and someone finds the energy to unload it.” She paused for breath. “You and Dan’ll have to quit making excuses and come down before we get too fashionable. Gerard can take you into the rain forest and there’s Mayan ruins.” She must have said all this before on the phone or e-mail. The important thing was to avoid empty air. “It’s super down there, Hannah. In the morning everything drips and the sound of the place is primeval.”

  “And Gerard? He’s well?”

  Liz took a photo from her purse and held it out. “I don’t think you’ve seen this one.” It showed a tall, dark man, with heavy eyes, strong and vigorous in his sixties, dressed in bush shirt and shorts.

  “A hero for the new age,” Hannah said. “The Great White Environmentalist.” She grinned. “Cool.”

  Hannah jerked the Volvo into the fast lane and Liz pressed her feet into the floorboards as if the car had dual controls like the one they’d all learned to drive on in Driver Education. Hannah had always been a kind of crazy driver given to last minute turns and tailgating. Liz felt the sonar beep of a headache behind her ears.

  In the Santa Clara valley, five years’ absence meant a century of change. Going way back she remembered a time when orchards, not silicon, supported the valley. A time when the fruity summer air sang with susurration of bees and yellow jackets and everyone got stung and bit and knew to jump into an irrigation ditch if a swarm attacked. Today there were freeways where she remembered tacky apartments, malls like castle complexes, and cars, thousands of cars. It was worse than Miami. Overhead the sky was yellow.

  Smaze, Hannah called it. “The drought just makes it worse.” The interior of the Volvo was hot and close and Liz rolled the window down a little. The noise of engines and tires on asphalt was unpleasant.

  “I can’t hear you over the racket.”

  “What about air conditioning?”

  “I am permanently and politically opposed to it,” Hannah said and grinned. “If you have time, I want you to visit Resurrection House with me. There’s one little baby, her name is Angel . . .”

  “You haven’t changed, Hannah. Always a cause. Always the life saver. Vietnam protests, abused animals—”

  “I have changed,” Hannah snapped. “Don’t patronize me because I haven’t had your big exciting life. What I do at Resurrection House is very important.”

  Shit.

  Coming home was like swimming in a strange sea. Below the surface there were thickets of tangled seaweed. “But you’ve got to admit there was a time—” Liz giggled and covered her mouth with her hand. “Remember when you decided it was cruel of Mr. Silva to keep his Japanese quail in that little cage?”

  “He was such a prick. He wanted to send me to Juvie.”

  They were eleven and in school they read about the cannibalism of overcrowded, stressed-out rats.

  “I couldn’t stop thinking of those pretty birds all pecking each other to death.” Hannah laughed. “How was I to know they were worth two hundred bucks each. They just looked like birds to me.”

  She turned off the freeway at Lark Avenue. The exit ran through a new housing development built in an old prune orchard. The homes were two- and three-story affairs with triple garages and massive brick and stone facades crowded onto lots suited to buildings half their size.

  “So much tack, so little time,” Liz said.

  Hannah braked and idled in a line of cars waiting for a landscape truck to unload a twenty-foot liquid ambar. “Gail Bacci says they’re going for more than a million each.”

  Someone in the line of cars banged on his horn.

  “Jerk,” Hannah said.

  “Who buys them?”

  “I don’t know. Computer people, I guess. They’re like an invading species. We never mix. We’re the old-timers. The newcomers think we’re frumpy. All they want to do is buy our houses, tear them down and build more of those things.” The line of cars moved forward. “You’re looking at the new Rinconada. Kids in Ingrid’s class drive Lexus SUVs.”

  “Are they nice kids?”

  “Jesus, who knows. The school’s got more castes than India. And it’s huge. Not like it was for us, the way we knew everyone.”

  “My parents would have hated it.”

  Hannah looked at Liz and shook her head. “Your parents wouldn’t have noticed.”

  A stinging wind blew through Liz’s mind, plucking the strings of her headache.

  When she was seven, she spent the night at Hannah’s house for the first time. On the twin beds in Hannah’s bedroom with its dormer windows and walk-in closet, the blue satin coverlets had been turned down and the pillows plumped. Liz saw Hannah’s sprigged flannel nightie laid across the blankets like a patch of garden and compared it to her own pj’s, buttoned up with safety pins. From the distance of several decades the disregard of her distracted intellectual parents still had power to tear her heart. It shouldn’t matter anymore, she told herself, but it did.

  “It’s all so clear in my mind, like it was yesterday . . .” Say it. “Remember Bluegang?”

  Hannah shuddered. “It’s changed too, big time. If I didn’t love my house and if the wildwood weren’t there like a barrier, I’d move across town. Gail says there are homeless people living in those caves up beyond the swimming hole. There’s trash all around and sewage too, I suppose. You’d probably die if you drank the water.”

  Talk, talk, talk. Saying nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Remember Bluegang?

  “Gail’s always after me to join the group she’s organized to clean it up, but I just don’t have the time. You know? I give her a big check every year but there’s only so much a person can do.” Hannah braked and turned into a parking lot.

  Liz read the sign painted on the building in front of them: Bacci’s Italian Market. In cement planters between parking places, purple and gold lantana drooped under the midday sun. The fragrance of salami, briny olives and baking bread came through the car window.

  Hannah switched off the ignition and reached into the backseat for her straw purse. “You want to come in? It’d tickle Mario to see you. He and Gail are coming to dinner Saturday if you’d rather not.”

  “I’ll stay.”

  Liz put her head back and closed her eyes. Fatigue and apprehension lay on her eyelids like iron coins.

  “Were you asleep?” Hannah asked as she opened the door fifteen minutes later. “Do you feel okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Liz poked in the brown paper bags. “What did you buy me?”

  “Salami. Biscotti with walnuts and anise dipped in chocolate. Mindy Ryder makes it.”

  “What’s she doing with herself?”

  “That’s probably not a good question to ask.” They laughed. “She’s coming on Saturday too so you can ask her yourself.” Hannah pulled out onto Rinconada’s main street lined with specialty shops and boutiques with clever names: Bearly Yours, Heavenly Heels.

  Liz said, “I was in love with him once. Mario.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Fifteenth reunion, I think. It was before I met Gerard.”

  “Well, let me prepare you. The Italian stallion has eaten a bit too much of his own spaghetti.” The car in front stopped suddenly. “Shit.”

  Liz double-checked her seat belt.

  “Gail’s made a fortune selling real estate to half of Silicon Valley and they all drive down Santa Cruz Avenue cruising the shops. Jeanne says when Judgment Day comes, Gail’s going to burn in hell for what she’s done to this town.”

  “How is Jeanne anyway? Her letters don’t give much away.”

  Hannah drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as they waited for traffic to clear. “She’d say the same of yours.”

  “Lord, Hannah, I’
m an open book.”

  Hannah’s gaze snapped. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Lizzie. I’m the girl who knew you when.”

  And I you.

  Liz asked, “How’s the abominable spouse?”

  “Still abominable.” At a stoplight Hannah signaled right and turned up Casabella Road.

  By contrast to Santa Cruz Avenue, Casabella Road had changed little in the years since Liz and her two friends walked it to and from school every day. It began at the Corner Drug Store and, staying level for a while, curved around the little town cemetery before it turned again and ran parallel to Santa Cruz Avenue for several blocks. Beyond St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church where Hannah’s father was rector for more than twenty years, it veered left and up the long grade old-timers in town still called Queen Victoria’s Hill. On either side, restored Victorian homes faced each other like a dowager standoff.

  “Stop a second,” Liz said. “Pull over.”

  It had been her intention to fix her gaze directly ahead when the car reached the corner of Casabella and Manzanita. But the wind was blowing hard again, stirring up the grit of memory. The two-storied Victorian stood in the middle of its half-acre lot and called her name.

  Hannah said, “It belongs to some people from Rhode Island now. Big computer bucks.” The verge board, the bracketed eaves, and the arch of rosettes crowning every window: all had been scrupulously restored and, like the rest of the house, sparkled achingly white in the sunlight. On the porch there was a swing with a bright blue canvas awning.

  “If you want to see inside I can call the owner. Her name’s Mitzi Sandler. I know her from the Spring Festival Committee. Most of the invaders are two income families, too busy to get into town affairs. She’s different. We don’t really know each other but she seems okay, better than most maybe.”