by Ann Hood
“‘Where did you two sleep?’ she asked me when we got back. ‘They won’t buy the cow if the milk’s free,’ she said.”
“But Daddy did.”
“One time, during a college break, Daddy came home to New Jersey with me. When my mother wouldn’t let us sleep together, we left. Daddy said no, we’ll stay, and I’ll sleep on the couch, but I refused.”
“She didn’t see you get married, did she?”
“No, she died right before. But she’d be proud of all we have now. I’m proud of it all.”
“I said such mean things to you,” Rebekah said, trying to fight back tears. But she couldn’t.
Howard came in then. “There’s been an awful lot of crying going on in this house,” he said.
“It’s all right now,” Elizabeth said, stroking Rebekah’s hair.
“Believe me, Bekah,” Howard said, “we’re all going to get through this.” Rebekah nodded.
“I’m the worst daughter in the world,” she said. “How can you guys even love me?”
“Listen,” Howard said, “go and wash your face and we’ll all go into town for dinner. What do you say?”
“Can I come too?” Jesse asked from the doorway, where he stood in his space suit, looking puzzled.
“Well, I don’t know,” Howard said, winking at Elizabeth and Rebekah. “We’ll have a vote. All in favor?”
Howard and Elizabeth raised their hands. “Two to one,” Howard said. “I guess you can come.”
“Thanks a lot, Rebekah. You probably wish Henry would come, huh?”
“Just shut up.”
“And I’m wearing my space suit.”
“Oh, God,” Rebekah moaned. “Mother, you’re not going to let him wear that stupid space suit to a restaurant, are you?”
“I think,” Elizabeth said, “that would be okay.”
WHEN JESSE TOLD HIS FATHER that he had talked to a benevolent leader from another planet about curing his mother, Howard told him it was all make-believe. But, he added, it’s all right to pretend.
“It’s not pretending,” Jesse said.
And then, a few weeks later, Howard told him that his mother was in remission, which meant she was better.
“She won’t die now, right?”
“She’s better for now,” his father said.
“I told you, Dad. Remember I told you.”
His father nodded and hugged him. “I remember.”
That night, in his space suit from Cape Canaveral, Jesse sat under the stars and waved to the tiny blinking one far off in the sky. And when he lifted his arm to wave, it was weightless and the silver space suit crinkled.
Claudia, 1985•
WHEN HENRY WENT AWAY to college, Claudia began to watch Days of Our Lives. It came on Monday through Friday at 1:00, no matter what. She was fascinated with the intricacies of the plot. There was an evil man named Stefano DiMera and a good family called the Hortons and lots of lovers unable to get together and secrets and murder and political corruption. Sometimes Claudia got confused and thought she really knew these people. She would tell Johnathan all about Hope and Hope’s mean husband, Larry. “If only we could help those poor kids,” she would say. But then she would remember that she didn’t really know them at all.
One day Elizabeth came to visit right as the show ended, and when Claudia opened the door, she thought that Elizabeth was Gwen Davies, a double-dealing lawyer who always fell in love with the wrong man.
“What are you doing here?” Claudia said coolly.
“You wanted to talk to me,” she said. “You called me, remember.”
“I know about you and Larry,” Claudia hissed. “Why don’t you leave him alone?”
“Who’s Larry? Claudia, why don’t you let me in and we’ll talk.”
Claudia did let her in. She was feeling confused because the woman looked less like Gwen Davies once she was inside.
“Look, I brought pumpkin bread. It’s still warm.”
“You aren’t Gwen at all,” Claudia whispered.
“Gwen? Sweetie, it’s me. It’s Elizabeth.”
Claudia stared at her. Memories flooded her mind. Elizabeth lived here. That’s right. With Howard and Rebekah. Claudia relaxed, smiled.
“I got confused.”
They ate the pumpkin bread and drank chamomile tea. Claudia inhaled and smiled. The kitchen smelled wonderful. Ginger and cloves and chamomile tea. And her friend Elizabeth was here, sitting across from her. In a low, calm voice, Elizabeth described a pattern she was working on. Seagulls, she said, their wings tipped in black.
“You said you had something to tell me,” Elizabeth said.
Claudia nodded.
“You know, Johnathan is so patient with me when I forget things. He says to try to put things in chronological order. Like a time line. Remember time lines. They would show how time is so insignificant, really. Like from the beginning of the earth until right now would not be such a very long line. Not really. And from, say, the Civil War to right now would be nothing at all.” Claudia held up her thumb and forefinger to measure the line. “Like this. I was a history major, you know.”
“Where is Peter, Claudia?” Elizabeth asked.
“He says he’s selling copying machines out in Vermont or somewhere. But really he’s with a woman in Bennington. He thinks I don’t know. But I do.”
“Claudia, I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Oh, it’s desperately true. But it’s all right, Elizabeth. Because I’ve been thinking of going back to California. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I have a brother who lives out in San Francisco and I’ve been thinking about taking Johnathan and going out there to live, out to San Francisco. It’s beautiful there.”
“Have you spoken to Peter about this?”
“Oh, he won’t mind. He could sell the farm and move out to Vermont. His girlfriend’s a history professor. Isn’t that ironic?” Claudia smiled. “I’ve already written to my brother. I expect a reply anytime now. Of course Henry will stay at Brown. He loves it there. Well”—she took Elizabeth’s arm—“listen to me! And you have to go and paint your sea gulls. I do hope they’re on a nice blue background.”
Claudia walked Elizabeth outside.
“Why, you have a car!” she said, and gently rubbed the hood.
“Howard’s softening in his old age. He doesn’t want me to walk so much.”
“It’s quite lovely.”
“It’s just an old thing, really.”
“Like us!” Claudia called after the car. She waved until it disappeared into a tiny dot. And then, humming, she went down to the pond.
Rebekah, 1985•
REBEKAH NEVER IMAGINED THAT she would shop in a Hallmark card store for cards with sad-faced kittens or cartoon ladies colored blue. But she did. She bought those and more for Henry. One had an upside-down koala bear on the outside and “Nothing to do but hang around while you’re gone” on the inside. Whenever he called, she took the phone into the bathroom and closed the door. She sat on the toilet, the phone stretched as far as it could go, so far that its cord was straight. Jesse sat in the hallway outside the bathroom and made kissing sounds. If Henry didn’t call, Rebekah conjured up sex scenes between him and the girl from Westport, Connecticut.
Elizabeth took her to a doctor for a diaphragm. It sat now in Rebekah’s underwear drawer beside a complimentary tube of contraceptive jelly. Sometimes, after she spoke to Henry, Rebekah practiced putting it in and taking it out, over and over.
Henry was coming home for the entire weekend. He took the day off from classes on Friday so that he and Rebekah could go out that night. She spent Friday afternoon with Fauna and Li, her new friends from school. Rebekah had gone so long without friends that she didn’t even mind that these two weren’t part of Sally Perkins’ clique. In fact, lately she liked having her own group, where she was the important one. Rebekah was trying on different outfits and whispering details about Henry to them.
“Is it hard wh
en he wakes up?” Li asked her.
“Not so loud!” Fauna said. “My mother’s right downstairs.”
Li picked up a pencil. “Is it this big?” Then she picked up a ruler. “Show me exactly.”
Rebekah laughed and studied the ruler. It feels so good, she thought, to be the one who knows.
As she walked home from Fauna’s, Rebekah began to get excited about seeing Henry that night. Despite all the details she related to her friends, Rebekah could never verbalize her own astonishment that it was Henry—tall, skinny Henry—who made her feel this way. He had been there her entire life, right there, waiting.
There was already a little snow on the ground. It seemed to Rebekah like it had just been autumn yesterday, with all the trees ablaze with color. She thought of how everything changed without your ever knowing it was happening. Just like Henry. And her mother. Her mother had seemed fine, healthy as ever, and yet she had cancer. The doctor had told them that the cancer was in remission. So all the time that she had imagined her mother dying, in fact she was getting better. There were still treatments, still a good chance that it would return and spread, but for now, there seemed to be a future. Rebekah remembered once seeing a picture of a murdered teenaged girl in the newspaper. The picture had been taken only two hours before she had been strangled in a park. There was the girl, smiling and sunburned in the picture, everything seeming fine. And then in no time at all, everything was over.
Rebekah’s thoughts returned to her mother. When she had taken her for the diaphragm, they had sat beside pregnant women and women with babies. Her mother had looked calm, reading Good Housekeeping with a picture of Marlo Thomas on the cover. When the nurse called Rebekah’s name, her mother had jumped up, then abruptly sat back down. “Go on,” she had said. “I have no business going in there with you.”
Afterward they had gone to lunch, the beige case sitting in Rebekah’s bag. “My mother never accepted anything I did,” Elizabeth said. “Everything was a struggle.” And then later, as they shared a piece of carrot cake, she said, “In high school I had a boyfriend named James. He wore a leather jacket and smoked Marlboros. I was absolutely forbidden to go out with him. So every night I would make up a different story to get out of the house and go to visit him.”
Rebekah laughed. She saw the rebel within her mother was within herself as well and knew that her mother saw it too.
“Did you sleep with him?” Rebekah asked.
Her mother blushed but nodded. “His mother worked at night and he didn’t have a father. They were divorced, I think. And we would stay in his room until ten o’clock, when I had to be home.”
Rebekah smiled as she thought of her mother with this boy in the leather jacket. She looked up and was startled to see that she’d reached her house. She paused at the front door. It was quiet inside. She peeked through the window. Jesse was sprawled on the living room floor drawing, her parents sat on the couch, looking at a book or magazine. Rebekah stood, staring in at them for a moment as if they were a family in a movie, her fingers absently stroking her nose as she watched.
WHEN SHE SAW HENRY’S white VW drive up, Rebekah took one last look in the mirror, then rushed downstairs. He kissed her as soon as he walked in and pressed her against the kitchen counter. “Let’s go,” he whispered urgently.
“Henry! My parents are in the living room.”
“I don’t care,” he moaned. “I’ve been waiting forever.”
But they went into the living room and sat with her parents, even stayed to play Scrabble. When the game was over, Henry yawned, stretched.
“Let’s go for some ice cream,” he said casually.
Instead, they nearly ran to the pottery workshop, scene of their summertime kisses.
“Don’t throw up on me,” Henry laughed as he pulled her close to him.
“Could we please forget that, Henry?”
IT WAS A SHOCK for Rebekah to walk into the kitchen the next afternoon and see Claudia and Johnathan there. Claudia had cut off her hair, almost all of it. It looked redder this short. The back had been shaven, like a man’s, the top was short and spiked, a punk rock singer’s hairdo. Without all that hair around her, Claudia’s eyes appeared enormous, large greenish saucers that loomed over her high cheekbones. She wore an electric blue dress that hung like a sack to her knees, and a strand of pearls that was so long, it brushed the hem of her dress.
Everyone was talking excitedly about a plane to catch, departure times, and where to put everyone and all that luggage as well. Rebekah looked at Henry for an explanation, but it was Johnathan who spoke.
“We’re off to San Francisco,” he said, and he paced as he spoke. He wore a small black suit with white socks and red high-top sneakers. He and Claudia looked like some strange new wave couple. “I’ve gotten into Stanford, you see. And so we’ll go out there and live with Uncle Ben.”
“Uncle Ben?” Rebekah asked.
Henry shrugged. “Mom’s brother.”
Claudia clapped her hands in excitement. “Isn’t it wonderful? Of course, Henry will stay at Brown. But Johnathan and I are getting on a plane and flying off to California.”
Rebekah looked at her parents, but they were still trying to organize a plan. Henry should, after all, take Claudia and Johnathan to Logan. Would all that luggage fit into his car? Elizabeth asked. No one answered. Instead, Claudia twirled, round and round, her pearls whipping through the air like a lasso.
“Did you notice,” she asked when she stopped twirling, “that I cut my hair off? All of it. And then I took it—and there was so much of it—I took it and waded naked into the pond and placed it into the water, all around me like a lovely crimson gown. Henry came and got me out.” She put her arms around him. “I got very angry then,” she said, “but I’m not mad anymore.”
Claudia, 1985•
LATELY, AT NIGHT, CLAUDIA dreamed of flying around the Golden Gate Bridge. Not in an airplane, but just with her body, soaring over it and under it, counting the cars and the sailboats and the people on bicycles. It was such incredible freedom to feel the wind rushing by and to look up and see the hills and the landmarks nestled against them. The Coit Tower. The TransAmerica building. All of it, right there ahead of her.
The dreams started even before she decided to go back there, before Johnathan got in to Stanford, before she heard from Ben, his voice over the phone sounding tinny and faraway as he shrieked, “Yes, yes, come. Bring the boy. Come.” People were calling her then about Johnathan. They wanted to test him, measure his intelligence, look into his psyche. Every day he went off with two men in a black K car to Cambridge. She would watch him walk down the driveway and get into the car, dressed in white socks and shiny wingtips, his thick black glasses smudged and slightly askew. “We’re going back,” she would shout after him. He would turn and wave, his blond hair cut in a late fifties crew cut. He didn’t have the slightest idea what she meant.
For a while, years ago, when she lived in the Haight, she made some extra money by reading tarot cards on a street corner. She would take two dollars from passersby and lay the creased cards out on a shaky card table with faded oversized aces imprinted on the center. “Decisions!” she would tell them. Or “Success!” or “Turmoil!” Then she would wrap the cards in a piece of fuchsia silk and wait for her next customer. Some people would demand their money back. But sometimes they would exclaim, “Yes! How could you know!” And in her dreams now, over the Golden Gate Bridge hung a star, like the one in the Tarot deck, with a lovely naked lady holding one corner of it. Claudia knew it was a signal to return there.
Bo was dead. She had received a letter several years ago from a woman named Molly, who wrote as if she knew Claudia. Remember the Wizard? she had written. He found Bo dead, on the living room couch. But Claudia could not recall Molly or the Wizard. They did an autopsy and found nothing—no drugs or alcohol or hidden diseases. He just died, for no reason. With the letter was a Jimmy Buffet album. He would have wanted you to have this, the lett
er said. Claudia played it over and over, searching for the significance of the album. Was there a song with a hidden message? Some words that had a secret revealed in them? She even took the titles and wrote them on a piece of paper, rearranging words and letters. All it did was leave her puzzled. But the album was one of the few things she was bringing with her back to San Francisco. It was at the bottom of her suitcase in a brown paper bag.
And now here she was, sitting beside her blue duffel bag in the backseat of Howard and Elizabeth’s car as they drove her down the Mass Pike, toward Boston and the airport and the plane that would take her, finally, back to San Francisco. She turned every few minutes to wave to all their children, who were crowded into Henry’s car, following close behind.
Once, when she turned, she imagined Simon in the car too. She saw him, for the first time, as the young man he would be now, had he lived. Claudia bit her lip and faced forward again. Was there anything worse, she wondered, than losing your firstborn? She had lost her parents and some friends. Even, in a sense, her husband. But nothing had been as bad as losing Simon.
Claudia met Elizabeth’s eye in the mirror. Remember, she wanted to ask, the first time I felt Simon move inside me? But she said nothing. Her hands danced across her stomach.
“How are you doing back there?” Howard said.
“Doing fine,” she said. “Doing swell.”
She pressed her face against the window and breathed hard, leaving a small steamy mark. She used to let Simon and Henry do that on their bedroom windows in the different apartments they lived in. They would draw quick pictures before the steam disappeared. A smiling face. A daisy. A cat. She used to have so many plans then. She would sit in those cramped apartments after the boys finally went to sleep and make plans for them. Claudia gazed out at the trees that lined the highway. They were blurry images, from the speed of the car and the tears in her eyes. Quickly, she puffed on the window again, and began to draw a face. Before she finished, it all vanished.