A Small Indiscretion

by Jan Ellison

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  You’d barely said a word to me about Emme that whole summer, and she had barely said a word to me about you. I hadn’t pressed either of you for information. I hadn’t wanted to pry. But I made a mental note to let you take me for a drive sometime soon. It was always in the car, during those sideways conversations, that you had told me important things when you were growing up. Maybe a drive would get you talking now.

  You kissed Clara and Polly on the tops of their heads. You helped yourself to a beer and joined your father out back at the barbecue. The doorbell rang. I felt a constriction in my core as I walked to answer it, certain it would finally be my father.

  But it was Emme, not “later,” but in the here and now, in time for a dinner to which she had not been invited.

  I had grown accustomed to her getups, but I was taken aback that night in spite of myself. She wore gold fishnet tights beneath an obscenely short A-line cocktail dress constructed of sheer lace and sequined gold leaves that looked to me like drapery fabric. On her feet were red fur high-heeled ankle boots, and around her neck was what looked like the decorated mane of a lion, a necklace made of gold goose feathers and heavy beaded silver jewels. But the real shock was her hair. In the twelve days since I’d seen her last, she’d cut off her gorgeous blond waterfall of hair and dyed it a brown so dark it was almost black. It was barely shoulder-length and teased up into a wild fuzz around her face.

  “You changed your hair,” I said.

  “Yes!” She flicked her head from side to side like a model, then she stuck out her hip and struck a pose, smiling broadly, her face so changed inside its new frame as to be almost unrecognizable. All her features were called out anew—the straight, narrow nose and round pink cheeks, the huge eyes beneath the long lashes, the plump red lips, the slender white neck choked by the goose-feather noose.

  The girls had not seen her in a month. They circled around her as if she were a friendly alien, touching her dress with the tips of their fingers, touching her tights, her boots, her necklace, her hair, and then climbing into her lap when she flopped down on the couch and crossed her legs.

  At least we had gone to a small bit of effort in our own appearances. I’d combed the girls’ hair and had them change their clothes, and to impress my father, perhaps, or to ingratiate myself upon your father by offering a small reminder of the body he’d ravaged the night before, I’d changed out of jeans into a sweater dress that clung to my waist, and I’d pulled on my high-heeled boots. My mother looked elegant in black pants and low black heels and a green wool sweater that called out the color of her eyes. She wore a pearl necklace my father had given her when they were still married.

  I offered Emme a glass of wine, which she declined, announcing giddily that she couldn’t drink alcohol because it interfered with her medications. This was the first I’d heard of her “medications.” But how much did I really know about her? I never liked to become enmeshed with the people I was obliged to pay to be part of my life. It seemed mercurial or false, somehow, when there was always the chance the situation would turn. Not that I had any intention of firing Emme. As uncomfortable as she sometimes made me—with her mood swings and her clothing and her entanglement with the environmentally correct lingerie man next door, not to mention her relationship with you, whatever its nature—I had come to rely on her at the Salvaged Light. She could handle the store on her own. She was careful with the merchandise and the money, and she was exceptionally good with customers, especially the men. I had eased off asking her to babysit the girls, because as much as they loved her, and as much as she appeared to be fond of them, I had decided she was not the model of young womanhood I wanted nesting inside their malleable frontal lobes.

  The phone rang, and my mother answered. It was my father. They spoke briefly. She put her hand over the receiver and said that he wanted to speak to me, but I could not bear to hear his excuse—a flat tire, a change of plan, an emergency back in Maine—for what I was certain was, in fact, plain cowardice. I shook my head.

  “Don’t even tell me,” I said, when she’d hung up.

  “It’s all right. He’s still coming. He got on the Pacific Coast Highway below Eureka and it took longer than he thought, then the car broke down.”

  “Of course it did.”

  “He’s in Bodega Bay, wherever that is. It’s the alternator, apparently. With the holiday weekend, it’s been hard to find a garage with the parts and the manpower, but he’s found a mechanic in Petaluma who will do the job tomorrow. He says he’ll sleep in the car tonight, and get it fixed in the morning, and see us sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

  “And he’s calling us now?”

  “Well, you know your father.”

  “And of course he had to take the scenic route. He couldn’t stay on 101 like a normal person.”

  My mother shrugged. “We didn’t exactly tell him we’d planned a big dinner tonight.”

  “But he promised he’d be here this afternoon,” I said.

  I decided, for the thousandth time, that until he was standing on my doorstep, I had no intention of believing I was ever going to see him again.

  Jonathan had come into the house and was watching the exchange. How I wished he would take me in his arms, as he would have two weeks before. I could sense, in his face, the battle raging inside him, and I could see the moment that his pride, or hurt, or anger, or simple pain won out—who could blame him?—and he turned away to tend to the grilling of the steaks.

  We sat down to eat. Emme was, that evening, as I’d never seen her before, almost dancing as she walked, or hopping, darting here and there, talking very fast about I don’t remember what, picking the girls up and swinging them around, touching Jonathan’s shoulder—flirtatiously, I thought—when he brought in the steaks, and practically hanging on you. She took for herself the seat I had set for my father, between you and Polly. My mother was directly across from her, next to Clara. Jonathan and I faced each other at opposite ends. I drank too much wine. Not like me. Not like me, at all, to overindulge for the second time in two weeks. I was not myself, I suppose, and in that I was not alone. I did not drink so much that I failed to keep track of the drinks of others—namely, yours, since your plan was to drive back across the bridge that night, and the city was, as usual, swamped in fog. You had four beers in four hours. Inside the legal limit, perhaps, but outside my comfort zone.

  I myself had three and a half glasses of wine. The vehemence the wine unleashed in me set off a domino effect as devastating as if I had been not only drunk, but the one behind the wheel of Emme’s car. It was not the predictable, linear sort of effect one gets with actual dominoes. It was more like the elaborate constructions you used to make out of blocks and marbles and plastic tubes and pulleys and levers and ramps when you were young. Rube Goldberg machines, I think they’re called. Architectural masterpieces that required every single curved and straight block, every groove, every angle and turn to be placed so precisely, the ball would roll smoothly on its intricate journey each time, finally coming to rest with a satisfied thud.

  That Labor Day weekend dinner was an architectural masterpiece of its own—a tragic chain reaction of wine and words and chemistry and history and madness that sent the car flying down the Pacific Coast Highway sometime in the night with you in the passenger seat and Emme at the wheel. It must have been my angry mention, over dinner, of my father choosing that route, instead of the more practical 101, that put the idea in Emme’s head. My anger and my righteousness became essential connecting pieces that nudged Emme’s hand, later, toward the faucet of the tub in the loft of the store, ultimately overflowing the tub and sending it through the ceiling, smashing the diamond lights below. And that nudged her hand again, however unintentionally, on the steering wheel of the Volvo, hurling the car over the side of the road and nearly sending you into oblivion.

  What had set her off?

  We had eaten dessert. My mother had taken the girls ups
tairs to get them ready for bed. You and Emme and your father and I were alone at the table, still lingering over the pie, and in my case, wine. I referred again to my father having the gall to take the Pacific Coast Highway when he must have known it would double the time of the journey and make him late. I went on with my ancient complaints. His selfishness. His narcissism. His habitual tardiness. His lack of interest in the people who mattered most—my three children, his own flesh and blood, who had gathered around this very table in his honor. In my mind I was contrasting him to Jonathan, who sat at the other end of the table, clearly uncomfortable with my rant. Jonathan was as reliable and unselfish as I believed my father was not, but he was also inclined to give people the benefit of the doubt until they proved him wrong.

  “Why don’t we wait to throw the book at him until he’s here to defend himself?” Jonathan said.

  “I’m not convinced he’s going to be here,” I said. “Ever.”

  I meant that when I said it. I really believed I might never see my father again. That he would vanish somewhere between Petaluma and the Golden Gate Bridge. When he did arrive the next day, I wasn’t there. I was at the hospital, then the Mermaid Inn. So he was greeted by my mother. Did they embrace? Was it as easy for her to have him there as it was for me, when I finally did come home? Was it as if they had never been apart?

  You and Emme sat quietly at the table through my rant about my father, but Emme stood up abruptly when I stopped speaking, knocking over your half-full beer. Her eyes were suddenly blazing, and she was leaning toward me with both hands open, as if she intended to strangle me.

  “You bloody fucking cunt,” she said. “At least your bloody fucking parents are bloody fucking alive.”

  The three of us were shocked into silence, and instinctively I put my hands up to defend myself. Emme pulled back and stood upright again at her place. She was gripping the edge of the table with her hands, and for a terrifying second I thought she was going to overturn it. I wish she had. There was nobody on the other side. The wine, the beer, the dessert plates, the forks and knives and candles would have been pitched onto the hardwood floor, and that mess might have been enough for us to recognize the extent of her mania and detain her until we could get help.

  But you stood up and gripped her shoulders and turned her body toward you.

  “Emme. Calm down.”

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  “Look at me.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Emme. Change the channel.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “I can’t. I can’t think of anything else.”

  “You can,” you said to her slowly. “You can think Zen.”

  Zen. It was like the word that ends the spell. The kiss that turns the witch back into a princess. Or so it seemed right then.

  She looked at you. Slowly, she let her forehead fall against yours. It reminded me of the moment, some twenty years before, when your father had proposed. There was a potent silence, and I felt we were invading a deeply private exchange. Then you put your arm around her and led her outside.

  LATER, IT WAS like the episodes from my childhood of my father’s drinking. I felt the evening more like a dream than a memory, the visuals both bright and tangled, the characters both themselves and not, the meaning clear one moment and lost the next. I could remember her leaning toward me and using that word, but I refused to fit the scene into the movie of my civilized life. I lay in bed unable to sleep. Jonathan lay next to me. He had generously rolled up the camping mat for the night. Was he only pretending to sleep while he mourned his own dead parents, and my inability to appreciate my living ones? Were the things I’d said about my father so mean and small as to justify such rage? I didn’t think so. Had I mistreated Emme in the store? No, I had not. Had I underpaid her? Or expected too much? Or been ungrateful for her hard work? Had I judged her, or belittled her, or bossed her around? I hadn’t. I’d been fair, even generous, if a little remote as the summer progressed.

  I thought of the mess she’d lived in in the loft. I thought of her mood swings. Were these signs of a serious mental disturbance I’d somehow overlooked? Maybe it was as you posited when you returned from delivering her back to the loft: She was an orphan, jealous of our family life.

  Your father and I had peered out the window after you’d led her from the house, and watched the two of you walking down the street. Not hand in hand or arm in arm, just walking beside each other like friends.

  Then I went upstairs to find my mother, who had heard the commotion and taken the girls into Clara’s room and closed the door.

  We put the girls to sleep. My mother followed me to my bedroom. My hands were shaking. She sat me on the bed and made me take deep breaths, which brought on tears. She handed me tissues, and when I was calmer, she raised her eyebrows at me.

  “I hope he doesn’t end up with that one.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “No kidding.”

  You returned, after an hour and a half, alone.

  “She’s all right,” you said. “I walked her back to the loft. I didn’t think she should drive a car. And I figured I may as well walk off the beers.”

  “What was that all about?” I asked you. “Why does she hate me so much?”

  “She was saying some crazy shit,” you replied. “I don’t think it was about you. She’s got a chemical imbalance going on. Her parents both died, so I guess she feels envious of our family. She knows she has to go see someone right away, though, an actual psychiatrist who can assess the medications she’s on. Meditation isn’t going to do the trick this time.”

  “She takes the meditation that seriously?”

  You looked at me, surprised. “Yeah, she’s into it,” you said. “I am, too, incidentally.”

  “You are?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did you never say so?”

  “I don’t know. You and Dad are so … anti all that.”

  “We are?”

  “Anyway, the good news is she was sleeping when I left her. I think she’ll be all right.” You handed me her car keys. “I got her to give me these. I guess she’ll want them back in the morning.”

  “That was a good move, Robbie,” I said, as I hung the keys on a hook by the door.

  Then you reached for your jacket. “You’re not going back to the loft, are you?”

  “No,” you said. “I’m going back to Berkeley.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes, alone.”

  “She might go find you there.”

  “She’s never even been there, Mom.”

  “Why not sleep here?”

  It was not that I was worried you were still tipsy, though I myself still was. It was that I wanted, very badly that night, to have all my children safe under one roof.

  You slipped one arm into your jacket.

  “Grandma’s on the fold-out, but you can have Polly’s room,” I said. “I already moved her in with Clara.”

  You looked at me. You hung your jacket back on the wall.

  “Okay,” you said. “You win.”

  “Do you want me to change the sheets?” I asked you as you followed me upstairs.

  You shook your head and told me I was crazy.

  “I’m not the only one,” I said, and we shared a quiet laugh. I was certain that laugh contained a mutual measure of relief. Because clearly this woman did not belong in our lives. Her outburst over dinner was affirmation that it was time for her to move on, go home to New York, find a way to get better. I would not have to dismiss her, or evict her, certainly. She would see for herself the situation was untenable given her feelings for me, whatever had brought them on.

  You grabbed a sleeping bag out of the closet and laid it on top of Polly’s sheets, saying you didn’t want to stink up her bed.

  I smiled, because you seemed so like your father just then. So considerate, so oblivious to your own bodily comfort, so invested in family. You flopped down in all your
clothes and I shut the door behind me. I had no reason to doubt you were there, where I’d left you, when the phone rang in the morning.

  Thirty-nine

  STORIES DON’T LIKE to end when you want them to, do they? Loose ends aren’t easy to snip with scissors or tuck inside a hem. They tempt you. They want you to keep pulling until there is nothing left to keep you warm.

  April is almost over. The plum tree across the street, which, a few weeks ago, was blooming a flamboyant pink, has already shed its color. My mother called, as she always does on Saturday mornings. She said she had news. I felt a hitch in my chest, thinking it must be news of you.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s about your father,” she said.

  She’d been keeping me abreast of their communication since he’d left in January. He’d been pestering her to come to Maine. He’d been telling her she’d love Little Cranberry Island, and that there was more work than he could do alone, with the garden and the goats. But she’d put him off. She hadn’t wanted to leave with you still missing. On the other hand, aside from a few emails, I hadn’t heard from my father at all.

  I could tell from her voice that something had changed. It was a voice I remembered from long ago—thin as blown glass.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “He’s off the wagon.”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “He’s met someone.”

  “Who?”

  “A woman.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  “AA,” she said. “A widow with a home on the water in Northeast Harbor.”

  “Northeast Harbor,” I said. “So she must be wealthy.”

  “She must be,” my mother said. Then, “Apparently he’s proposed marriage.”

  For a minute, I couldn’t say anything. I was shocked. Not only by the news, but by the strength of my own feelings. Somewhere, deep down, I’d believed my parents would get back together. I’d hoped for it—a reassembling of my original family—without even knowing that was what I’d been doing.