The Ruins of California

by Martha Sherrill

  I leaned over a nearby table and opened a candy dish. There were always surprises in these covered dishes—gum, soft mints, Marlboro cigarettes that I sometimes took into the powder room and pretended to smoke—but inside this one was a piece of paper. Unfolding it, I saw Whitman’s printing: RONALD REAGAN FOR PRESIDENT, it said. I giggled.

  “What’s that?” Marguerite asked imperiously while setting down the cookie tray.

  I folded the note and stuck it in my palm. (My father, who had begun to teach me his card tricks, would have described this move as “palming it.”) Marguerite took an endless amount of time getting situated and finally sank into a mushy love seat by the fireplace.

  “It’s a note from Whitman,” I said, squeezing my fist tighter.

  “It is?” She didn’t sound surprised. “About what? Whitman was just here—last week or two.”

  “Nothing,” I whispered. “It’s just a silly note. He’s being funny.”

  “Is he? What does he say?”

  I felt my pulse quicken—the note seemed sacrilegious to me. God only knew what Marguerite might do. “It’s just a joke,” I said. “That’s all. Nothing. He left it for me.”

  She stared at my hand. Her eyes were intense, like a sharp stick poking me. “Whitman is rather devilish, isn’t he? He’s going to give Paul a run for his money. Ha!”

  I scooted the note into my fingers and then, in one quick gesture, slipped it into a front pocket of my jeans.

  Marguerite looked over at the tiered table. “Let’s start with tea,” she said, her voice becoming instructional. “Black for me. A little sugar.” I reached for a cup and saucer with one hand, then picked up the teapot. The previous Easter I’d spilled a demitasse of coffee all over my dress and had gotten an unforgettable stare of displeasure.

  “I hear he’s been coming to your house a good deal—has even stayed the night,” Marguerite continued, watching the pot as the tea poured out. “He never stays overnight here. I hope Whitman’s not a great burden to Mrs. Garcia in any case. I do hope not. Is he, Inez?”

  I shook my head.

  “Perhaps if I installed a slide for the swimming pool, my grandchildren would visit more.”

  I stirred a small spoonful of sugar into her cup and handed it to her.

  “You forgot my napkin,” she said. “That’s it. Good girl. Now serve yourself and sit down. The only thing that interests Whitman these days is surfing. Am I right? He has that wonderful red surfing car—”

  “Van.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s a van. And all those special racks and boards and wetsuits. He came by last week and showed me the whole thing. Plunged into the pool wearing his complete getup. He looked so dashing! So tall—and those nice Ruin shoulders. I must say, Whitman might wind up being better-looking than Paul. Don’t you think? Have you seen him in that black wetsuit? Oh, of course you have. Men look so terrific encased in black, don’t they? Nothing like seeing a man in white tie.”

  White tie. What was she talking about? It was, no doubt, another bygone detail from Marguerite’s dying world. I sat down with my trembling cup of tea.

  “How are your mother and grandmother?”

  “Okay.”

  “Connie’s still at tennis?”

  I nodded, took another sip.

  “And you say she’s awfully good? She’s gotten so sporty. Ready for the sandwiches? Excellent. Me, too.”

  That was my cue to serve. Everything was a cue—and it was exhausting trying to catch all of them. “Take one of the clean, small plates,” Marguerite commanded from her pillowy throne. “That’s it. Those are dessert plates. How do you like them? They’re Limoges, from France. Isn’t that a lovely pattern? It’s a very old one. That’s it. I’ll take one chicken salad and one cucumber sandwich. No, no. Not the cookies. Not yet. Do you ever take tea at home? Oh, that’s right. You said you weren’t allowed. Mrs. Garcia must have some nice china. Mexican patterns—or Peruvian?”

  I shook my head vaguely, still not entirely sure what a pattern was. Abuelita had a few things from Peru, but they were never used. Sometimes, on a really busy weekend, we used paper plates for all the meals. We used paper napkins, too, not even the good kind.

  “May I have a bit more, please?” Marguerite held out her cup and saucer to me. “Your mother has a boyfriend, Paul reports.”

  I nodded and focused on pouring more tea and handing back Marguerite’s cup without spilling anything and getting the knife eyes. I put four sandwiches on my plate and took a bite of one before sitting down.

  “Rod Weeger,” I said.

  “Rod what? Never mind, finish chewing. And he’s nice? Finish chewing, Inez. I can see traces of your sandwich in your mouth.”

  I nodded and swallowed, but it seemed to take a long time. “He’s a PE teacher at my school, and—”

  Marguerite turned her head away and looked at the tiered table of sandwiches again.

  “Can I get you more?” I asked.

  “Please. If you could. One of each. And how does school go?” Marguerite didn’t want to hear too much about Coach Weeger.

  “Fine.”

  “Straight A’s?”

  “Close.”

  “Your father always got straight A’s.”

  “My mother, too.”

  “Did she? She’s so pretty I guess it’s easy to forget how smart she is.”

  Marguerite made more slurping sounds with her lips that I gathered she couldn’t hear. She rested the cup and saucer on the table and picked up a sandwich. “Your father went to cotillion when he was thirteen. Do you know what that is?”

  I shook my head.

  “Cotillion. I think you’d like it. You learn to dance and things like that—the waltz, the fox-trot. Things you’ll need to know when you make your debut. And later on, in college, and forever. Invaluable. The Arroyo puts together a very nice coming-out party.”

  “Coming out of what?”

  Marguerite chuckled. “Inez, you’re so amusing.”

  I stood up. A box of chocolate miniatures from Jurgenson’s had found its way to the tiered table as well. I was just about to reach for some cookies and cake, and maybe a piece of chocolate, when I caught myself.

  “Would you care for some chocolates or cookies, Marguerite?”

  “Lovely. Very lovely. A small assortment,” she responded. “And do you know which ones are the coconut crèmes? You know, there’s a code. Each kind of chocolate has a different swirl on the top. The circle is a raspberry crème. The triangle swirl is a coconut. Yes. Good girl. I’ll have one of those. A cookie, too.”

  I walked to the love seat and handed her the plate.

  “They use the old ballroom at the Arroyo for their cotillion—it’s very nice,” she said.

  Back at the box of chocolates again, I picked one with a little wave on the top. “What’s this?” I asked, not wanting to discuss learning to dance or anything at that club of Marguerite’s.

  “Bring it closer,” she said. “Oh, that’s a very yummy one! Chocolate crème!”

  I held the small chocolate crème between my fingers and studied all its sides.

  “Try it!” Marguerite blurted out. She watched me excitedly as I popped it into my mouth, seeming to hang on every chew that I made. “Can you believe how creamy?” she said with a slurpy voice. “Like velvet.”

  She picked a cigarette from a white marble urn. After she lit it up, pursing her lips together and sucking like her life depended on it, I could smell the menthol. It was such a sharp smell it almost made me flinch. She blew out a giant gust of smoke that seemed much bigger than her body. She looked at my jeans and then down at my feet.

  “Well, I say. Those are interesting shoes.”

  “Earth Shoes.”

  “What are they called?”

  “Earth Shoes. It’s a new thing. The heel is lower than the toe.” I tipped up my shoe to show the heavy rubber sole and the way it was slanted. “It’s supposed to be a more healthy way to walk. Supposed to be good f
or you. Natural.”

  “Really.”

  “It’s supposed to be like walking in the sand. The heel goes lower.”

  “Amazing. And your top looks authentic. Straight from Mexico. You and Whitman are really full of new trends. Some of them, of course, I really don’t care for. The miniskirts are awful, to my eyes, and the— But, say, how do you like Justine Polk? She came down to go to the races at Santa Anita with your father a few weeks ago. You can’t imagine the flowing robes that girl had on, and the biggest fur coat I’ve ever seen.”

  Justine? Had he mentioned coming to San Benito with her?

  “She rides, you know. A beautiful rider.”

  Marguerite kept some horses at the Arroyo Club, a part of her life that had always intrigued me. Why would my father and Justine come to San Benito—just to go to the races? It didn’t make sense. Had I known that Justine was an equestrian? I thought about the ponies in Griffith Park, the acrid smell of the stable, the little circle the ponies rode in, attached to metal arms like spokes of a wheel. Those were the only horses I’d ever ridden.

  “It seems serious,” Marguerite was saying. “I suppose they might marry. Such a handsome couple. Don’t you think so, Inez?”

  “Huh?”

  “Paul and Justine Polk. They might marry.”

  “No they won’t,” I said—probably with too much certainty.

  “No?”

  I shook my head. “He doesn’t believe in marriage.”

  “Your father?”

  “He doesn’t believe in it. He says it doesn’t work.” I smiled a little wickedly.

  “Ha!” Marguerite cried out. “What a madman! Marriage doesn’t work for him, is more like it!” Her eyebrows lifted—and she suddenly looked a great deal younger. “Justine Polk is so lovely. Those blue eyes! And from a family that’s very…Well, how do you like her, Inez? She’s quite beautiful, isn’t she? Whitman seems completely enthralled.”

  I shrugged.

  “What?”

  “She’s okay.”

  Marguerite stifled a smile. “Just okay?”

  “No, not really.”

  “No?” Marguerite began to laugh really loudly—a deep, smoky cackling. It startled me, mostly because I had caused it. There’s no way to describe how rewarding this was, how suddenly happy I felt in my grandmother’s company as I watched her collapse into indescribable glee. She was still a girl, I could see that suddenly, and not much past my age.

  “I’m just being honest,” I said.

  “Of course you are!” Marguerite reached out—indicating she wanted help from her downy prison on the love seat. “Tell me more! Tell me more! But let’s walk in the garden, shall we? My legs have fallen asleep.”

  We covered most of the pathways of the garden, Marguerite explaining what was blooming and what was about to bloom, a parade of Latin names that I forgot instantly. When we rounded the bend and arrived at the pool house, we came upon the figure of an older man in pressed khakis, a handsome white shirt, and a straw hat, skimming the surface of the pool.

  “Who’s that?” I whispered to Marguerite.

  “My new pool man, Carlos. Very nice.”

  He looked up for a minute, tipped his head—a confident, Old World nod—and continued to skim red bottlebrush needles from the water. Across the way, in a shaded area of the garden, I could see Jose kneeling and spreading white powder under the azaleas. “Bonemeal,” Marguerite said. “Doesn’t it smell just awful?” She stopped for a second, almost as though disoriented, then swung around quickly and faced me.

  “What does he do?” she asked, grabbing my arm.

  “Carlos?”

  “No. Your ridiculous father. What does he do for a living? He seems to be making money, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how.”

  I shrugged, shook my head, and turned down the corners of my mouth into an expression of abject disapproval. Marguerite let out a little whoop and laughed. Then she patted my hand—the softest, gentlest, most reassuring gesture. She was the only person in my life who ever did that.

  “Impeach Nixon,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Ronald Reagan for president.”

  “What?”

  “I always check that dish.”

  “You do?”

  NINE

  Wolfback

  What surprised me most—stunned me—was how my father could consider living someplace other than Telegraph Hill. His life there, particularly in the small neighborhood where he had lived since separating from my mother, seemed irrevocable and permanent. He was a fixture in North Beach, almost a part of its steep slopes and narrow alleyways, spaghetti restaurants and pizzerias. I couldn’t imagine him away from all the smells—the espresso, the incense, the sour wine (as if poured into the gutters), the mustiness of Alegrías, and the saffron and clams in El Bodega.

  But he complained about traffic and noise—the huffing and grinding of the great tourist buses when they reached the top of Telegraph Hill. He hated the parking hassles and delays, the fireworks in neighboring Chinatown (“New Year never ends,” he’d sigh). He groused that North Beach, once an authentic ghetto of Italians and Beat Generation poets, had become commercial and touristy and expensive. “It’s an Italian theme park,” he said, “owned by the Chinese.”

  He was just building a case—convincing himself it was okay to leave the city—but, in truth, abandoning North Beach never seemed the real goal. He was drawn, almost irrationally, to building a house. Inside the Marin Headlands, and between two state parks, he’d found a little slice of land not far from where we had walked that gloomy day six years before. He’d imagined it perfectly: a simple cottage of glass set snugly on a cliff overlooking the beach.

  At first he talked constantly about the house—how it would look, where it would sit on the hillside, the way the teak would age with time. Later he grew quieter, ruminative, as if it were a secret mistress he wanted all to himself. Even when he called or wrote, wanting to discuss other things, it never seemed far from his mind.

  Dear Inez,

  I hope you aren’t worrying about high school—and what unexpected changes it might bring. Perhaps, like me, you will find yourself generally untroubled by change. There will always be uncertainties in the future. In fact, they start being fun! When there aren’t enough uncertainties, I always feel a little nervous.

  I’m happiest when improvising. Of course, this could be seen as a major fault. Since birth I’ve possessed many gifts, traceable to Marguerite and N.C.—certainly not the result of any particular effort on my part—and these talents have offered me the option of improvisation when my plans were either incomplete or lacking—which is to say most, if not all, of the time. (You’ve probably noticed this, right?) I’ve always had a weird aversion to planning and no fear of drifting in my life, because of my ability to respond quickly to immediate events—a major resource. But sometimes I worry that my energies have been spent trying to respond and land on my feet, rather than building anything important. That’s how I seem to like things: slightly unsettled. Lately, though, I sense it might be time to settle down.

  Ten Four,

  Daddy-O

  He didn’t appear to care much about Harrison-Ruin anymore. The company was involved in developing a microprocessor, but this achievement left my father restless and bored, almost disdainful of his colleagues and partner, who talked only about stifling the competition—the handful of larger companies who might dominate the market with inferior products. “It’s a waste of time even thinking about IBM,” my father liked to say. “If you spend time and energy checking out who’s in the race with you,” he said, “you’ve already lost.” He preferred experimentation and being on the edge—ideas, not implementation. Rather than worrying about Harrison-Ruin, he focused his time and creativity on a slice of land and a house of glass. It was an irrational, almost crazy pursuit. He was forty-seven. Is that why? Or maybe the explanation was more fundamental: He’d finally made enough money
to finance it.

  After the land deal closed, and well before the permits were obtained—that took a year—he began interviewing architects and finally settled on a modernist named Ooee Lungo, a stocky South African with a symphony conductor’s wild head of hair and flinging arm gestures. Before long, Ooee had swept into our lives, always seeming to arrive with expensive bottles of wine and handfuls of fresh herbs. He loved to cook and drink, always with gusto and impatience. Like my father, he was single—a playboy, I suppose—and he showed up for any event where some pretty women might be present: flamenco parties or juergas, art openings, El Bodega for dinner, the weekly “talent show” (as my father had started to call it) at Alegrías. He was gregarious and fun-loving, a devilish charmer who managed to fit into any scene. He arrived at Marguerite’s beach house for two nights and took over, cooking an enormous rack of lamb, playing cards, offering skim-boarding lessons to various assembled teens—he’d grown up at the beach—and then soaked in the bathtub until noon the next day, smoking cigars and reading the International Herald Tribune, which he’d gotten Aunt Julia to fetch in town.

  My father called him by his first name—OH-ee—but to my cousins, who embraced him as a long-lost uncle, he was “Lungo” or “Lungs.” Food and wine and women (when Justine wasn’t around) were all he and my father talked about, when they weren’t discussing The House in pompous tones, using words like “breakthrough” and “statement.” They fought about the design details and loved making up by agreeing. They were competitive, particularly about their engineering skills. Since I was little, I’d watched my father take things apart—a clock, a television, a transistor radio—and put the pieces back together. He liked fixing things, reordering things, and toying with machines. When my parents were still together, he’d built a record turntable and stereo receiver out of parts he ordered from a German catalog, and then seemed determined to tell me all about it—how the needle read the grooves in the black disk, how the sound traveled into the speakers, how the music came alive. And later, whenever he took the MG to a garage for repairs, he spent a great deal of time talking to the mechanics about the problems and possible solutions. (He burned through quite a lot of mechanics.) When workmen came to fix something in his apartment, he watched over their shoulders and asked questions until, pretty soon, he’d made it clear that he knew more about wiring or plumbing than they did.