This morning he asks Anna if she would like to go. “Come on, Little Man, we’ll have a ball,” he says. He is on his third cup of coffee and because the jitters don’t hit him until his fifth cup, there isn’t any irritation in his voice yet.
Something makes Anna hesitate before giving her usual “no.”
“Are you actually considering it?” her father asks. His eagerness makes her give in.
“All right,” Anna says, and instantly regrets it once she sees how happy it makes him. She doesn’t want that responsibility.
He’s now packing sandwiches and bottles of water into the cooler with more enthusiasm. There’s nothing in Parkfield except a tourist cafe, nowhere to eat real food, nowhere to buy gas, nowhere to shit, as Anna’s mother used to say. Her mother’s hatred for Parkfield was something Anna had always taken for granted but now she asks her father why her mother is so vehement.
Anna’s father shrugs, and puts the cooler and his equipment into the trunk of the Toyota. He’s brought a supersized paper cup of coffee with him as well. “One day she’d had enough. Said that this obsession wasn’t healthy. That she preferred a different scenario for the future than the one I was fantasizing about.”
Anna’s father rubs his forehead as he starts the car, puts it in reverse, begins backing down the driveway. “I was disappointed by her decision. To me, it was our family time. Driving together. Playing your Sesame Street songs. Once it was so hot that the car began overheating and we couldn’t use the air-conditioning. We stopped at a Motel 6 outside King City, paid the manager fifteen dollars and literally threw you into the pool, still dressed in your shorts and T-shirt. You were three, maybe four. Your mom and I also went in with our clothes on. We figured they would dry in the heat. You should have seen your mother then. So pretty—and so game. Nothing would stop her from doing the most outrageous things.”
“But you’re happy together, right?” Anna asks. She realizes how much she’s missed talking to her father. They’re flying past the wasteland south of San Jose and will soon start hitting the outlet malls at Gilroy. When Anna’s father and mother were first married, all this was still farmland. They told Anna of the picnics they’d have up in the hills overlooking the valley, of the need to walk and talk loudly to scare away any mountain lions.
Her father takes another gulp of coffee. “What does a happy marriage look like?” he asks.
Then, after a moment, “We don’t fight an awful lot. She makes direct confrontation impossible, yet always manages to get her way. Haven’t you ever wondered why she doesn’t wear a wedding ring?”
“She’s always said it gets in the way when she plays,” Anna says. “She doesn’t wear any jewelry. You know that.”
“Only partially true,” her father said. “She used to love jewelry. Not rings or bracelets or anything that encumbered her hands, but necklaces and earrings, she was crazy about them. She used to wear these long chandelier earrings made of red crystals. They came with two matching bracelets that she wore around her ankles. They chimed when she walked. It was the most heavenly sound.” He is talking more to himself than to Anna.
“But the wedding ring?”
“She refused to wear one. I was young and stupid and told her that it wasn’t a proper marriage without exchanging rings. God knows where I got that idea from. My stubborn-ass father, probably. She gave in, or so I thought. We had the ceremony, I put the ring on her finger, all that good stuff. Then we went on our honeymoon to Hawaii. Kauai.”
“I’ve seen the pictures,” Anna says. Her parents, looking impossibly young. Her father posing in front of a waterfall. Her mother, knee-deep in the surf. Never any photos of them together, as someone always had to be holding the camera, and back then her parents would have been too shy to ask strangers to take pictures of them.
Her father takes another big gulp of coffee. His fingers begin to drum on the steering wheel. “On our first day, we went for a long walk at the beach. Sometimes we could walk on the sand, but other times we had to climb over rocks that blocked the way. We got to this one massive outcropping—it must have been thirty feet tall that extended about fifty yards into the sea. I wanted to turn around, but your mother insisted. So we climbed to the top of this rock pile. I have to admit, it was spectacular. The sun was just setting, and the tide was coming in, and hit the rocks with such force that the spray shot up like a fountain. We were soaked but we didn’t care. I remember looking at your mother and thinking we’re married! and believing it for the first time. That was exactly the moment that she took off her wedding ring and, pulling her right arm as far back as it would go, threw it into the water. She then turned to me and calmly said, ‘I told you I didn’t like rings.’ I noticed from that point on she stopped wearing other jewelry as well. I never asked her, but I think she made some sort of pact with herself. That she’d give up all jewelry to make up for her refusal to wear the ring.”
They are silent for a mile, then two. They have passed the outlet malls and are heavy into garlic country. The rich pungent scent invading the car, even though the windows are closed. Roadside stands advertising garlic sausage, garlic cheese, garlic ice cream.
“A happy marriage? Yes, I’d say it was,” Anna’s father says.
More silence for more miles. Then he says, too casually, “So what’s going on in the born-again club these days?”
“Dad, I’m not born-again,” says Anna. “That’s something else altogether.” She abruptly rolls down the window, sticks her face out into the balmy, heavily garlic-scented breeze. “Don’t trivialize the path I’m taking.”
“No one’s trivializing anyone here.” Anna’s father takes huge gulps of his coffee, which must now be cold. He has abandoned his previous good humor, is predictably irritated by her words. This is the father Anna knows best. “I’m just curious,” he continues in a voice that makes it clear he isn’t curious at all, “is there some rite of initiation, like sprinkling water on your head. Any breaking of glasses? Any sign or symbol that you’ve crossed some threshold?” Anna’s father was raised in an atheist household, and although not as militant about it as Anna’s mother, is suspicious of faith of any kind, views religion as some sort of scam.
“No, I’ve done nothing of that sort,” Anna says, trying not to sound irritated herself, and refuses to say more. She deeply regrets coming.
“What about your grades?” he asks. “When did your report card come?”
Anna braces herself. “It came last month,” she says. “But you won’t like it.”
“Why?” They’re passing the Monterey turnoff. Traffic falls away to nothing as the needle edges from 70 miles per hour to 75.
“Dad, not so fast,” Anna says. She curses herself for getting drawn into this discussion. They’ve had it too many times, and the results are the same. Anger and misunderstanding. Or anger because of too much understanding. Perhaps she is too clear about what she thinks and is doing. She should take her mother’s route, hide behind a smokescreen. But Anna and her father have always demanded honesty from each other and turn spitting mad when they get it. After the storm, usually a period of calm and mutual acceptance.
“What will your report card show?” Anna’s father asks.
“I haven’t been doing so great in school lately,” Anna says. Tired of the wind in her face, she rolls up the window, slumps down in her seat as far away from her father as possible.
Her father continues accelerating. Soon he’ll hit 100.
“Slow down, Dad, you’ll get caught.”
He ignores her. “Goddamn it, Annie, you’ve let this religion thing go too far. How are you doing on your college applications? They’re due next semester, right?”
Anna has been dreading this moment. “I’m not applying anywhere,” she says. “My path lies in another direction.” The minute the words are out of her mouth, Anna regrets telling him. It would have been better to ha
ve led him and her mother on as long as possible, until it was too late for them to argue.
Anna’s father’s face is mottled, but he is speaking more quietly, a bad sign. “You’re shutting yourself out of the real world. Soon you’ll have nothing left. And that includes your family. Do you really think I’d stand for this? After all we’ve done to make sure you get into a good college?”
Anna can cry, or get angry. She decides on the latter.
“You should know,” she says.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you know what it is to shut down and shut out others because you’re pursuing your own . . . interests.”
“You . . .” he says, then stops. He is not so out of control that he has stopped monitoring the highway for cops. He suddenly slams on the brakes so he’s lagging behind the speed limit, only 50 miles per hour, a sign that he’s spotted a policeman. Sure enough, Anna sees one in the right lane. He’s in the middle of a cluster of cars, staying with them to appear innocuous.
“I mean that Mom told me about your drinking.”
“What do you mean? I’ve told you about my drinking.”
“No, really told. How bad you were.”
Anna’s father goes still. “It was a rough time for all of us. Except you. You were too young to have noticed.”
But he’s wrong. One of her earliest memories. She couldn’t have been more than four or five. She’d heard a noise. Never thinking that the house could be anything but safe, she climbed down the stairs in her footed pajamas. The noise was coming from the kitchen, a kind of rhythmic shuffling. Anna stopped at the kitchen door. There she saw her father, alone. He was dancing. Eyes closed. Not seeing her, not seeing anything. Just dancing. And not in a silly way, as in the movies, where men use a broom, or place their hands on the imaginary waists of imaginary partners. No. He gracefully lifted one bare foot, placed it down again, and then did the same with the other foot. All while making lovely undulating waves with his arms. The music he was hearing must have been sublime. The drink was a part of it. The drink in the clear glass, no ice, just a pale colorless liquid, sitting on the table as he paid it homage, adored it with his body.
“So,” Anna asks. “What exactly happened then, that I was too young to remember? I’m old enough to understand.”
“Don’t change the subject,” her father says. The police car is now directly behind them, following close. Anna sees drops of perspiration on her father’s face. He is, with great effort, keeping his voice level. With his eyes on the rearview mirror and only half paying attention to Anna he says, “I want to talk about your future. Do you want to take a year off after high school? A gap year? Your mother and I could probably live with that.”
The police car puts on its signal, merges into the right lane, and passes them. Anna’s father heaves a sigh of relief.
Anna knows she’s lost him. She tries again.
“Dad, please. I need to know,” she says.
“Know what?” He is starting to speed again already.
“Your drinking. Mom has told me about it. You mention it sometimes. Was it a big deal?”
Anna’s father gives a short laugh. “A big deal? I’d say. A very big deal.”
He is calmer now, his voice at its normal pitch and volume. “Your mother gave me an ultimatum. Quit, or she would leave. With you, of course.”
“And you chose us,” Anna says impatiently.
“No,” he says, “I didn’t.” He is staring straight ahead. Highway 101 is utterly flat at this point, with the artichoke fields stretching out to infinity to the east and low, ugly brown hills of dirt to the west. “You could say that I chose to follow my bliss. And it wasn’t you or your mother. Not then.”
Anna hadn’t been expecting this. Her hand grips the door handle.
“I chose the booze. And you and your mother left. For approximately seventy-two hours. She went to Martha’s. And then came back, obviously.”
“Because she loved you,” Anna says, confident she knows the end of the story.
“No, more because she couldn’t stand being stuck alone with you, couldn’t think how she would raise you on her own.”
Anna is unprepared for the pain. It hits in the abdomen, right below her breasts. Makes it hard to breathe.
“You were a difficult baby. You had colic, cried all day every day. Then, the terrible twos turned into the terrible threes turned into years of bad behavior. You fought us on everything. Then one day, in your fifth year, the Anna we know today emerged. A little quirky, but fairly docile. The wildness gone. The pediatrician thought it might have something to do with you being a late talker, finding it difficult to communicate. That you were frustrated. We didn’t know. We thought we had a bad seed.”
He pauses and concentrates on driving as a truck pulls onto the highway outside Salinas, causing the cars on the two-lane stretch to hit their brakes. Anna’s father slams the horn.
“On the third day she came home, you trailing behind her,” he continues. “You hadn’t stopped crying since you’d left. You were crying for me, your mother said. She’d finally put you to bed in Martha’s back bedroom and realized that she would do anything to ease the burden, even if that meant crawling back to me. Which she did. Knowing your mother, you can imagine how much that cost her.”
Actually, Anna can’t imagine. It hurts too much to try.
“I was still drinking. Drunk the morning she walked in,” her father says. “But somehow things were okay between us. I was safe again. I sent her to bed, and tried to get you to quiet down, even momentarily. I hoped you’d eventually pass out from sheer exhaustion. No luck. Finally, desperate, I ground up a couple Valium, put them in a glass of warm milk, and coaxed you into drinking it. So on my last night of drunkenness, you got stoned right along with me. Rather sweet when you think of it. You pretty much passed out, I passed out, and when I woke, things were normal. Except all my bottles were gone, and you were gone and your mother was holding a knife to my neck. I’m not kidding. When I came to I was slumped on a chair in the kitchen, my head resting on the table, and a steak knife pressed against my Adam’s apple. Try that again, and you’re a dead man, your mother told me, and I believed her. I guess you could say she scared me straight.”
“But,” Anna says.
“But what?” he asks, not looking at her. She wants to ask. The dancing. Did she make it up? Was it a dream superimposed on the past? Or simply an early manifestation of what Dr. Cummings calls her illness.
“But I saw you,” Anna says, finally. “Drinking.” Does she want him to confirm or deny? Which would be worse? To have actually seen your father smile in a way that made all subsequent smiles false? Or to think your father incapable of joy?
He doesn’t bother to ask what Anna is talking about. “No, you didn’t,” he replies. “You couldn’t have.”
“You were . . .” Anna almost says happy but stops herself. “Definitely a bit hammered,” she finishes.
Anna wonders how her father views himself. Parent of a test-tube baby, not of his genetic making. Indifferent lawyer. Watcher of clocks. Wearer of hats. Chaser of disturbances. Desirer of cataclysms. His obsession with anything to do with matters of seismic, geothermic activity, elastic rebound theory. His measuring devices, many of them homemade. His charts and graphs. His maps of squares and diamonds and circles, all precisely color-coded based on USGS data. Every tremor on the San Andreas Fault marked in red. The Calaveras Fault, green. Concord-Green Valley Fault, yellow. Greenville, Hayward, Rodgers Creek, and San Gregorio faults: blue, purple, orange, and black. Other fathers get text messages from friends and family. Anna and her mother are forbidden to text him. That method of communication is sacred for earthquake alerts within one hundred miles of the Bay Area. He doesn’t miss work. But at any other time, anything above a 5.0, he’s gone.
Perhaps he could understand what Ann
a is yearning for. Perhaps he does understand. He is as enamored with the idea of widespread destruction as the bloodiest-minded members of Reverend Michael’s church. And his response to the coming cataclysm just as selfish. He doesn’t give seminars, donate time to earthquake preparedness committees. Instead, he delights in knowing he will be among the informed, among the prepared, among the surviving.
He is now silent. He finished his coffee long ago, but picks up the empty paper cup and makes as if to drink from it. A sure sign he is stressed. Anna has seen him lift an empty fork to his mouth when asked a question he didn’t want to answer at the dinner table. During business calls he takes at home, he pretends to write things down with his finger on the tabletop while repeating words and numbers back into the phone.
As he drains the imaginary dregs from his cup, Anna sees his left leg start bouncing up and down.
“I’m not sure what you’re doing . . .” he begins.
“Nothing,” Anna says, as quickly as she can.
“This isn’t about me. It’s about you. This weird . . . phase.”
“I’ve told you, it’s not a phase,” Anna says. “It is a new life.”
“It’s hard to keep up,” he says. “One minute you’re deeply depressed and the next you’re running around with a wacko cult that wants to save the world.”
“Not save,” Anna says.
“What’s that again?”
“We don’t want to save the world,” Anna explains. She is patient on this point, since this is what most people misunderstand about her faith, and therefore her calling. “We don’t want to prevent the mayhem of the Tribulation. Any more than you want to prevent the Big One from happening. If you could throw some TNT into the San Andreas Fault, you’d do it in a heartbeat. Anything to speed up the process.”
“And you?”
“Perhaps we have more in common than you think,” Anna says.
“Isn’t this where you tell me that nurture beats nature every time, given you’re not really my daughter?”
“Isn’t this when you say it doesn’t matter one iota to you which man’s sperm I came from?”
Coming of Age at the End of Days Page 9