In the dining room, Gerard was showing Min a scab on his leg. They inspected it together, heads bent, touching its edges. I laid out the place settings. The two children started counting their bug bites, giggling. She was making a friend. I was relieved. Then I looked up and saw my brother Robert on the lawn striding toward the patio, his face eager. He can’t wait to burst in and tell us one of his long-winded stories, I thought. I returned to the kitchen to help my mother soak some of the grease from the bacon with paper towels and pull a heavy stack of plates from the cupboard. I knew I was hiding, but I didn’t care.
Through the window above the sink I watched my father and my husband as they climbed up the hill toward the house, my father with some effort. His legs were spindly and pale, as if this were the first day all summer that he had worn shorts. Otherwise he looked younger than a man of fifty-six. His hair was still thick and dark, his posture very erect. Jonathan kept up easily as he described something, blocking off portions of the air in front of him with his hands. Beside my father, Jonathan looked short and stocky, almost pudgy. His hair was the longest it had ever been, and he had grown a beard in the last few months, which I liked. It made him appear a little dangerous, a little unpredictable. It reminded me of how he had been when I fell in love with him.
When I met Jonathan, I had wanted to get as far away from my parents as I possibly could. I wanted to get married, but not to the sort of man they had in mind for me. I wanted to live unconventionally. Jonathan had been a radical—to the degree that such a thing was possible in 1958—when I met him during my junior year of college. He was a Democrat, and he had never finished college, both of which made him unsuitable in my parents’ eyes. He rarely spoke to his own family and was curt to the point of rudeness with mine. Secretly, I was delighted. I believed he could offer me the two things I had been looking for my entire life: freedom and adventure.
But in time Jonathan had grown to like my family, my parents most of all. After our move to California, we would fly back east and spend long weekends with them. He said he felt embraced in a way he had never felt wanted by his own mother and father. He enjoyed their esoteric discussions during which no one yelled at anyone else, and he liked what he viewed as their permissiveness. He couldn’t recognize that they were actually indifferent, at least to everything that mattered. He didn’t see how they demanded polite behavior over honesty. He admired them for everything I did not. I tried to explain how often, growing up, I had sat at the dining table hoping that my father or mother would focus on me for a short time, ask me about school or my friends, recognize something clever I had said. We had all wanted that. Robert had received it to some extent, being the favored child. But mostly my parents existed in a world of their own, speaking to each other about things we knew nothing about and expecting us to either listen or conduct our own separate, intelligent conversation. I finally realized that Jonathan had been won over by my parents. This outraged me; it was the last thing I had bargained for when I married him.
I watched my husband and my father pace across the lawn, deep in conversation. They glanced at each other, smiling and nodding in agreement. My whole life I had yearned to talk with my father with that much engagement, that much passion. I carried the platter of bacon into the dining room and set it down in the middle of the table. Porter and Gerard immediately grabbed for it. Min watched us all. From across the table I caught her eye and smiled at her. She flashed me a lightning-quick grin, then it vanished and her gaze passed on to Robert.
When they came inside and joined us, my father nodded at me and sat in his chair at the head of the table. Jonathan kissed me on the forehead. I was relieved to have him back. But I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t temporary. After an absence of three and a half years, we hadn’t even been here a day and he had gone over to the other side. I pulled him toward me, an arm around his waist, breathing in his familiar aftershave and the piney scent his clothes had picked up.
After the meal, Nora and my mother cleared the dishes while Nora’s kids scuttled out of the house, racing each other down the hill. Jonathan asked Min if she’d like to go with them, but she shook her head.
“Shall we all take a walk?” he asked, standing up and pushing his chair against the table. He spoke loudly enough to include my father in his invitation. “Min, I know you want to see the pool.”
Min looked up at me. “Mommy, can we, please?”
I watched my father leave the room, apparently not much interested in spending time with us, his daughter and granddaughter. I heard the front door close. “Why don’t you go?” I said to Jonathan. Min and he came around the table, and I stroked his arm, catching his hand in mine. “I’ll find you. I want to say hello to Pop.”
“Sure.” He squeezed my hand.
I leaned down to Min. “Let’s both spend a little time with our dads, okay?”
“And I want to go to the apple tree you climbed on,” she added.
I imagined Min straddling one of the crooked branches up in the old tree, inching her way along it. Then I saw the branch break and my daughter tumble out, falling head first onto the hard ground. I can’t keep her safe, I thought, my heart clutching then starting off again twice as fast. As hard as I try to protect her from harm, she’ll be on the brink of disaster every minute. Anything can happen.
“Don’t let her climb it,” I told Jonathan, gripping his hand tightly. “It’s too dangerous.”
“It wasn’t when you did it.” He pulled his hand out of mine.
I looked hard at him. “No, I mean it. Don’t let her leave the ground.” He stared at me as if I were crazy. I felt crazy. Something was wrong with me, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Please, Jonathan.”
“It’ll be okay, Catherine. Calm down. We’ll see you later.” He turned from me. I stared after him. Why didn’t he understand? I myself didn’t understand this sudden terror, but the feeling was real, and strong. Why couldn’t he see that and accept it? Why did he always have to contradict me? As they moved away, Min turned back and waved.
My father was standing on the front steps with his hands in the pockets of his Bermuda shorts fiddling with some change. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his sneakered feet. I stood beside him, sipping my coffee, looking out at the hills across from us. The area bordering our land was part of a state park, so there was no danger of it ever being developed. We had an uninterrupted view of leafy green maples and elms, a field overgrown with grass turned beige from lack of rain, and the pure blue sky overhead. There was no breeze. I could feel a trickle of sweat drip down my side.
My father had never been a talkative man. We stood for a while in silence, listening to the call of a mourning dove. A chipmunk ran across the lawn. As our silence wore on, I became aware of how acutely I still wanted to be close to him. I hoped he would tell me something about himself that could be between us alone. Maybe he had made a small breakthrough at the pharmaceutical lab where he worked. I had always admired my father’s intelligence and perseverance. For a time, I had hoped to grow up to be like him, until I discovered that I disagreed with almost everything he believed in. Maybe he would ask me about something I cared about, showing me that he knew what that might be. I drank my coffee and tried to think of how to start such a conversation.
“Have you seen the garden?” he asked, turning to me.
Gratitude flared up in me for this small invitation into his life. Perhaps this was a turning point. I remembered how attentively he had listened to Jonathan as they climbed the hill earlier.
“No, I’d love to. You know, we just got here last night, Pop,” I reminded him playfully.
He stepped onto the grass and began walking around the side of the house. Left behind, I put my coffee cup down on the top step and ran after him. Then, annoyed with myself, I slowed down to a walk. I breathed in the sweet scent of the freshly mown grass, a smell I missed in Mill Valley.
My parents’ garden was a special project that they had worked on together for the past
fifteen years, when one by one we had started to leave home for college. During the week my mother kept it watered while my father commuted from Poughkeepsie to his lab in the city; on weekends they weeded and checked for pests. I remembered winter nights when they would pore over seed catalogues, discussing in meticulous detail the quality of various strains of beets and melons. They managed to produce most of the vegetables they ate over the summer, and my mother canned the remainder. They used raised beds and covered the plants with a light, semi-transparent cloth instead of spraying them.
I fingered a fat, wrinkled leaf from a plant that was heavy with both green and red tomatoes, held up by a stake tied to the stem. I could smell the soil and the thin, bitter odor of the plant itself. Reaching out, I pulled a ripe tomato from the stem and bit into it. Its sweet, acidic juice filled my mouth. I ate it greedily, the juice spilling onto my hand.
“We’ve been having them every night in salads,” my father informed me. “The lettuce is ours too.” He pointed it out several rows down, pale green beside a line of darker skinny plants.
“Onions?” I guessed, feeling absurdly hopeful.
He nodded. “And string beans, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes,” he said, walking down the beds. He bent over and pulled the leaves of one bushy plant aside, inspecting, then checked the next plant over. Straightening, he said, “Come see the flowers,” then turned and walked around the corner of the house toward the patio.
These were less well cared for, for some reason, growing in unruly clusters along the low stone wall that edged the patio. Most of them were wildflowers. It looked as though the soil hadn’t been weeded all summer or the flowers cut back. That didn’t seem to matter; the bed was a wild, beautiful profusion of color.
The night before, after Jonathan and I had climbed up to our room, weary and a little disoriented, I had been touched to find violet stonecrop and blue sweet William arranged in a vase on the bureau. My parents didn’t usually pick their flowers for the house. I asked my father, “Was it you who put the flowers in our room?”
“Flowers? I think Nora was asking about vases after dinner.”
My father pulled a few weeds and threw them on the grass behind him. I looked up at the house, shading my eyes from the sun. The dark red wood and white trim had faded and was peeling in places. “Time for a paint job,” I said.
My father looked up, appraising the house. “Yes, I’ve been putting it off. Maybe I’ll get Robert to help me with it this weekend. Or Jonathan, if he’s looking for some good, solid physical labor.”
“I could help you, Pop,” I ventured.
He shook his head, still gazing up at the house thoughtfully. “I don’t think so, Cathy. I want it done right.”
I stared, stunned, at the side of his face. Then I was furious, thinking that I would know how to paint houses and measure out foundations if he had taught me along with Robert and Andy. But there was no point in getting angry at him. He would only tell me he didn’t appreciate my tone of voice. It would never occur to him that he had hurt me. I said simply, “I’d like to help you, Pop.”
“Why don’t you go take a swim with the others,” my father suggested as he stepped onto the patio and opened the screen door. “I’ve got some things to take care of this morning.”
After he had gone inside, I stood where I was, too dazed to move. Then I wandered along the flowerbed and picked a small bouquet of orange marigolds for Min. I am thirty-one years old, I reminded myself. I have a husband and a daughter and a full life independent of my father. But at that moment I couldn’t make them real to myself. There was only me and my father, and he was implacable. Walking back past the vegetable garden, I rolled the ruffled petals of the marigolds against my cheek, breathing in the flowers’ sturdy scent.
I rounded the corner of the house and stopped. On the front lawn Jonathan stood holding Min in his arms, her short legs hanging down on either side of him, his hands making a seat beneath her bottom. Her arms were draped around his neck. She put her face very close to his as she spoke, her fine black hair brushing his forehead. It looked like a lovers’ private conversation. Immediately I felt excluded. Min never confided in me, whispering in my ear. With me her declarations were always blunt, straightforward. I drew back to watch my husband and my daughter whispering on the lawn. Both of them were too absorbed in each other to notice me anyway.
Eventually Min pulled her upper body back. She put one fist to her mouth and extended the other one out and back to the first. “Bom, bom, bom, bom,” she sang.
“What instrument is that, Min?” Jonathan asked her.
Min ignored him and kept on playing, tilting her face up to the sky. Her hair fell away from her neck.
“What instrument are you playing, Min?” Jonathan jiggled her a little to get her attention.
“The tuba.”
“Nope. The trombone.”
Min wound her arms around her father’s neck, singing her simple melody to him as though there was nobody else in the world.
“How does the trombone look, Min?” Jonathan asked her. Immediately her hands went up to imitate it again.
“And what does the tuba look like?”
“It’s big,” she answered.
“What does it sound like?” Silence. “Does it have a low sound?”
Min started singing in a high voice, smiling at her father.
“And what does a trumpet sound like?” Jonathan persisted.
“Daddy, let’s sing some more,” Min said, pulling on Jonathan’s beard, making him smile.
“Anything you want, sweetheart. You’re my little girl.”
“I love you best of all, Daddy.” She hugged him tightly around the neck. Then they began singing, her high trombone voice and his low tuba voice in unison, bom, bom, bom, bom.
I turned away from them and walked around the side of the house again to the back door. I felt dizzy and afraid, my heart beating hard in my body. Jonathan had always been a very loving father to Min. He was the playful, indulgent parent, the one who came home from his office and provided the gift, the magic, the special surprise. Of course she would say she loved her father best. I was always with her, feeding and washing and caring for her. I was the one who made the rules, who told her no and sometimes made her angry. I knew I could be over-protective as a mother. I had no right to expect Min to return the passion I felt for her. But inside I felt ripped apart, shredded like a flimsy cloth torn in two. I lived for her. I couldn’t bear to think that anyone—even Jonathan—might be closer to her than I was.
In the stream that ran at the bottom of the hill below the house, a series of stepping stones crossed a calm pool of water. They were flat and fairly evenly spaced, yet it only occurred to me for the first time as I walked from one to the next that they had been put in place by hand, probably by my grandfather or his father. The stream ran clear and wide and shallow, bounded by woods on both sides. As a teenager I had spent hours sitting by its shore, watching the water move unhurriedly downstream. I remembered admiring how it bent around rocks or fallen tree branches, the way flames did but without burning them up. I had wanted to grow into a life that was more like water and less like fire, where being near others was soothing rather than searing. I remembered too finding the stream’s quiet gurgle a relief from the constant calling of human voices up at the house. I would bring a book with me to read, propping myself against the wide trunk of a tree.
On the far shore, I followed alongside the brook. Occasionally I grazed past the underbrush, brambles scratching my legs. The sun was now directly overhead, beating through the leafy trees, creating a dappled effect on the surface of the water. A mosquito hummed near my head. The earth smelled cool and damp. I was trying to think of nothing, to empty myself of words and faces and feelings until all that remained was the sun’s heat on my skin and the stream’s constant babble like chimes on a breezy day.
Small dark fish darted around in the water. I didn’t know what they were called. I crouched down to w
atch them flicking their tails, changing direction. I watched for a long time, then I stood and walked again. Eventually I found the clearing on the other side of the stream where my father wanted to build his guest house, marked by stakes in the ground and a string running in a rectangle between them. I moved on, not thinking, just walking, listening, watching.
I was hungry when I climbed the hill back to the house. In the kitchen the dishes from lunch lay soaking in the sink. I wondered if my mother had made some disapproving remark about my absence when they sat down to eat. I wondered if they had missed me. The house was quiet; my parents were most likely resting in their room. I didn’t know where everybody else was. They had probably driven off after lunch to play tennis at the club, bringing the children along as ballboys. I took a large bowl of potato salad out of the ice box and picked at it with a fork from the sink. There were a few bologna slices left from the kids’ sandwiches. I unwrapped them from their waxed paper, put a little potato salad inside, rolled them up, and ate them. Then I went upstairs to change into my bathing suit.
Jonathan and Min and my niece and nephews were in the water when I arrived at the pool. The children were taking turns diving from the deep end and swimming underwater to the other side. Jonathan stood in the shallow end, crouched down, making shapes with his body for the children to swim through. I smiled, watching them, enjoying their enjoyment. Whatever it was I had been going through earlier had dissipated entirely, and I was relieved. All I had needed was a quiet walk.
“Hi,” Jonathan said as I sat down on a folding lawn chair and arranged my towel, suntan lotion, and book beside me. “Where’ve you been? We looked for you. You disappeared.”
“I’m sorry, Jonathan. I guess I needed some time alone.” I unscrewed the top from the tube of Bain de Soleil, squeezed a dollop onto my palm, and began to rub it into my legs. “I went down to the stream.” I was even starting to feel good, stretched out in the sun, not having to go anywhere. I had everything under control now.
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