For a piece of literature to work, it is said that characters must evolve from beginning to end, that changes in their energies and motives are what reward the reader. Mother’s note was her mea culpa, and she wanted me desperately to believe she had changed. I decided to wait and see; words were one thing, and her words were compelling in their contrition, but deeds would be the proof of the pudding.
So, the second thing that involved her was odd in its serendipity. The Prism trial had just started, and Mother came up with a connection to it that stunned Abby and me, and may have turned out to be exactly what the prosecution needed.
I received a cassette tape in the mail with the following brief note: “Son, I don’t know if this will be useful to you, but somehow this man knew my resistance to your relationship with Abby, and he wanted to extort money from me if he agreed to shut her up and make her go away. I ignored him, but typical of my fastidious business style, I recorded our conversation. Mother.
I wasn’t even sure she knew the man was on trial, though I was willing to give her that much awareness. To me, the tape and the note were follow-ups to her letter, wanting to come clean about her often unsavory scheming.
I gave the tape to the district attorney. On it were the condemning words, “For ten grand I could see to it that this Abby bitch gets hers.”
I don’t need to go into the details, though I know that a juicy trial makes for steamy drama in a novel or a film. The DA saved this little gem for after Abby’s emotional and profoundly moving testimony, which, even with the defense attorney’s scathing accusations, seemed to carry enough force to condemn our one-time pal and fellow writer, Kentucky Prism.
Abby sobbed when alone with me after being on the stand, but she was, as I saw it, more than convincing, and the jury agreed.
“On the charge of aggravated assault and rape: guilty,” the verdict read. The judge’s sentence was for six years in the state penitentiary.
The DA decided not to hold a second trial on the arson charge.
THIRTY-THREE
Protagonists and plot begin to fall into place. The tale winds down. Yet, some thorny facets linger and must be resolved.
“I feel a hell of a lot better,” Abby said, “but why do you think they’re ignoring the arson charge?”
“The guy will be locked away, even with good behavior, for at least four years. The DA mentioned to me that an arson conviction might be a stretch, since Ken didn’t know your parents and had no grievance against them.”
“Bullshit legalese,” she said. “It was punishment, pure and simple. His twisted way of revenge.”
“Well, they didn’t destroy the evidence. The fire investigation is still considered ‘open,’ and if our pal ever goes afoul of the law again, even for something minor, they can pin it on him. The DA said he made that clear to Ken as kind of an official threat.”
We were having breakfast at a chain coffee shop, eggs and bacon and home fries and toast, the whole caloric unhealthy mix. Three days after the verdict, Abby had called and said, “We need that conversation, over food, to make it more palatable. Meet you at nine tomorrow morning, the Carrows near your apartment.”
I wonder, as a writer, if it is appropriate to attach an air of tragedy to certain foods. I associate a hearty spitted roasting beef with merriment, baked turkey or ham with family passages, rare Ahi tuna or poached salmon with brainy dialogues. Never thought of breakfast food one way or the other, but that morning in that cafe, in those sets of circumstances, eggs and bacon took on a heavy tone of imminent sorrow.
Slowly, because Abby seemed determined to proceed according to some methodical plan, a tale began to unfold of deprivation and loss, the trappings of grief, a routine perceived as lonely, bordering on the sordid. “My life has been absurd,” is one phrase she used in laying out her prologue.
“I’m a lost child. Shitty parenting, a depraved cousin, a temper from hell, and along with that, my talent is suspect. What have I got to show for a quarter century plus? And lately I’ve triggered combat with a sicko who tried to rape me.
“It’s not working, Clare. I don’t see myself as a quitter, but I’ve got to cash in the old and start over, get the hell away from my failures and grievances. If there were a magical forest nearby I’d hike into it, mystery and all, lose myself in greenery, to hell with wild beasts and exotic illnesses. It would be a rush. It would be something new. Do you see that?”
Holy shit! My dream, the woman about to challenge the dangers of the unknown, walk into a frigid jungle at the rim of the Arctic Circle. It was a premonition. Could dreams do that, too?
I stared at Abby as if she were a savant, a mystic, as if she had somehow inserted herself into my private subconscious world.
“Translate,” I said. “How does that urge to escape your life play out in a practical sense? I guess I need to know how it affects us—well, what the consequences are for me.”
She looked forlorn, sadder than death, the way a burglar might look caught in the act, eyes avoidant, shoulders pulled in as if shivering from the cold, nothing about her contentious, every part of her apologetic, even before anything was said to warrant an apology.
When she spoke her voice was hollow, a curious blend of fear and determination, the way a woman speaks when she has finally revved up the courage to end her marriage.
“There can’t be an us, Clare. I’m not healthy enough. Partnering means mutuality, an ability to share. I don’t know how to give.”
“You mean for good? You want to split for good?” It was not a complete surprise to me, but that didn’t lessen its impact.
“I’m not sure. Funny thing, I have a lot of affection for you, more than anyone else ever in my life. Maybe if I sail to Bali, or even run away to some mountain village somewhere, I’ll find myself and realize what I’m trashing. I wouldn’t expect you to be waiting, hat in hand, when and if I decide to come back.”
“You told me I’d run.”
“Pure projection. I had the words right, but I always knew it would be me.”
“I dreamt that you—I think it was you—were in the wilds, way up in the north country, a hostile landscape, and you insisted I turn back. You were dumping me, and setting out on your own into a dark woods.”
She laughed abruptly, with a remarkable shift in mood, and said, almost cheerfully, “I can’t believe that I had that dream. It’s what tipped the scale. I realized I was sending myself a message, only it was in the southwest desert, a different locale, and I was about to trudge off toward some distant mesa without water or food.”
We both shook our heads in wonderment. In an improbable twist of focus, the bizarre dream revelations deflected the reality of our dissolution.
Abby was kissing me off, and I was unfazed—at least in that prescient moment.
Makers of music, singers of songs, movers and shakers, leaders of nations, humanitarians, despots, purveyors of science—step aside, all, for dreamers of dreams.
Nothing and no one steals our hearts and corrupts our moods more than our dreams. On unbidden gossamer wings they flutter into our nights, and linger like malevolent fogs to darken our days.
THIRTY-FOUR
Nearly four years have grudgingly inched by since that coffee shop denouement.
I heard from Abby only once in all that time, a voice-mail in the beginning of the third year, like a town crier of old, heralding the latest news.
“Clare: I still love you. I’m a new woman. Life is good, life is bountiful. For two years I lived in Dunsmuir, an old railroad town near Mount Shasta. I was a waitress in the Cornerstone Café. For the past year and a half I’ve been in Ashland, Oregon, seventeen miles from the California border.
“I had a collection of stories published under the name Abigail Grew. Brought me six grand so far. I’m writing like crazy. Think I finally have something to say.
“There are three men I date, not really committed to any of them. Not sure I want to be. Ever.
“Don’t try t
o track me. I’m still a work in progress. Some time I expect to say definitively Abby grew, and now she’s grown.
“Hope your life is transcendent. Hope you are in love. Hope most of all that your nights are replete with splendid dreams that fill your days with joy.
“I’ll call you again. Who knows when?”
So, here I am at thirty-one, my life a mixed metaphor: happy and sad, uplifted by victories and buffeted by setbacks, hopeful as a trumpet call, somber as rain.
My baseball book, like a bat cracked while delivering a hit, died a hero, a few thousand sold, interest in it spent.
A second novel was recently accepted by a press in Marin County. I don’t think it’s great, but it could be commercial.
I’ve had two brief stories published in monthly magazines, which added a few hundred bucks to my sparse reserves, one a follow-up to my baseball novel, bought by a sports journal that thought it “realistic.” The other was about a man who loved two women equally and couldn’t make up his mind. I got that idea from Abby.
Mother is still monitoring me, on the periphery rather than frontally. She would like more, but I can’t afford her wily ways in my life. Not surprising to me, she dumped Barry the bore, the overt reason that he was inattentive and self-centered. But, from my insider view, I preferred the explanation that she needed control over everything in her life more than she needed a warm body beside her in bed.
Which brings me to the most important developments that have influenced my last few years.
Kentucky Prism is still locked away, no time off for good behavior. Through some clandestine channel—I can’t be sure of its exact source—I heard that he had been raped by a fellow inmate, or maybe by more than one. He started a small riot in his cellblock and his rap sheet noted the trespass. I also heard, from an assistant to the warden, that he had written about his predicament and that a publisher was interested. Our culture is splendid that way: criminals become celebrities.
Alejandro has been living in a residential facility named Vista, specializing in what they call ‘developmentally delayed adults.’ Some are schizophrenic, others bipolar. Enough said.
What I think of as the most influential events have to do with my stepsisters.
Stevie, the elder, broke up with her poet-lover. He was a possessive aesthete and she was a bird that would soar free. As I write, she is an assistant to a well-connected and prestigious Hollywood producer, makes good money, has dated a couple of quasi-famous actors, and seems content. As a side activity, she performed every couple of weeks at a club in West Los Angeles, songs she mostly wrote, but some old standards as well. She gave up on me a while back, her fashionable surroundings providing more than ample masculine sustenance.
Jeri. Ah, Jeri. She finished her university studies locally and was accepted to graduate school at, of all places, Harvard. For a couple of years she and I have been exchanging letters and emails. I saw her two Christmases ago and we had some good moments, though, I must confess, frustrating for me. She seemed so deadly serious about her burgeoning writing skills that any relationship focus completely escaped her.
My earlier interest, even when I was devoted to Abby, has not waned, but I am at a loss as to what to do about it. There has been a steady pull toward her, as I realized that she was the trustworthy part of my dream-woman, healthy and unsullied by horrible childhood affronts. Since I first began to understand that, I have found myself disinterested in pursuing other women at all. In my naïve view of relationships, I hold onto the myth, or perhaps the unsubstantiated assumption, that there is a ‘right’ person out there for each of us, and if I know who that is, why would I bother playing the dating game?
I haven’t sat around languishing for these years, my need for novelty shoving me off to Europe for three weeks, London, Paris, Amsterdam—I visited the Anne Frank house—and Copenhagen. Another time, I spent six days on the Mexican Yucatan Peninsula, which then was slowly recovering from a category four hurricane; many flattened trees, but the sand and sun and surf still glorious.
Here it is June, Jeri has finished her master’s degree in creative writing, was honored as a Phi Beta Kappa, received a university award as ‘outstanding graduating English student,’ and will be returning to California in a few days.
What will that mean for me? Nothing much, I imagine.
With a touch of whimsy, I wonder if she has written me into any of her prize-winning creations.
My father and Lee invited me to dinner to meet and greet the returning and triumphant Jeri. Stevie would also try to make an appearance, though her “busy social schedule” could interfere.
When the door opened—Jeri answered my ring—I stood for a moment, mouth agape, aware, maybe for the first time that this woman in front of me, grinning with joy, unselfconsciously holding my eyes with hers, was absolutely spectacular in appearance. How in hell, the thought rippled through me, could she not have been wrapped up by someone on the East Coast, a hot-breathed, brilliant scholar-type, who would have dazzled her with a brilliance matching her own?
Before I could step inside, she leaped forward and encircled me with bare arms, holding me close, whispering over my ear, “Clare, I am so happy to see you.”
“Me, too,” I mumbled absurdly, my typical ineptitude with women gripping me with strong fingers of fear.
“Come in, we’re almost ready for dinner. There are drinks being mixed, a wide selection. I’m a gin and tonic person myself.” Her manner was mature, steady, a look of majesty about her, the teen exuberance I was drawn to not gone but mellowed, under control, pressed into a channel of self-confidence.
“Okay. The gin part is good for me, but I’ll take it with vermouth and two olives.”
She took my arm in hers, her breast against it in all innocence, but stirring me so that my face, I am sure, looked baked-red.
Dad and Lee were hospitable as always, the perfect hosts, no tension, no expectations. I felt deliciously at ease—which triggered a vagrant thought that, with Abby, whom I loved dearly, that feeling had always been absent. Too much unfinished business, a plethora of old hurt mucking up the present moments.
We drank our choices and gabbed about politics (“The government is sleep-walking,” Jeri said), the latest space ventures by NASA (“They found ice just below the surface on Mars,” Dad said), and any family news thought of as suitable for open discussion. Stevie’s career, I could tell, was not what Lee had hoped for, yet there was little criticism—more like, “If she’d let herself…,” a realization that the older sister, too, was full of potential.
Smack in the middle of dinner, Jeri said, “I decided to break away from my work this summer, no writing for a month, a time to play and relax.”
“You deserve it, dear,” Lee said.
“What would you like to do by way of relaxation?” my father asked.
“I want to see great theatre. Never have been to the Shakespeare festival in Oregon. Would like to do that for a few days. See plays, eat well, and flake out.”
Her words stirred my awareness: Abby, her milieu, they could run into each other. Then, the unexpected: Jeri turned toward me, reached over, and placed her hand on my arm.
“Dear brother Clare, what would you say to joining me? I’ll make the arrangements, get the tickets, secure lodging, all that.”
“Well, I….”
“Hardly cost you anything. We can drive; I checked and it’s six hundred fifty miles straight up highway five.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of what? That I want to go, or that I want you to go with me?”
“That, the second part.”
“Absolutely. I’d love it. We get along well, don’t we? And we can bring our writing and bore each other with reading aloud.”
I looked with embarrassment at Lee, then my father, and said, “You think it would be okay?”
They both laughed, making me feel stupid, and Lee said, “Why are you asking us? You’re one up on thirty and Jeri is only a few yea
rs behind. We don’t control your lives.”
I am a product of my childhood influences, regardless of my age. Mother had drummed into me all her controls and fiats. Constantly I forget that I am free, a person with an open field, my choices, my decisions. A murky voice still nags at me, but from where, and from what corner of my memories? What encumbering messages continue to ooze from my nighttime adventures and pollute my days?
“Yes!” I declared with resolve unusual for me. “I’d love to go.”
“All right!” Jeri said, leaned over, and kissed me on the cheek.
My decision and her reaction filled me with an eerie delight, until, with a sudden flash, I remembered Abby; I would Google Ashland, Oregon, to see how large a village it was, and the likelihood that we might encounter her. If we did, what in hell would I say? What would I do?
That night, before sleep, though I had subdued it for the last couple of weeks, I began to chew my tongue in earnest. Then, with an enigmatic feeling of contempt, I conjured up an image of good old Ken Prism in jail, tic-ing away while being raped.
THIRTY-FIVE
We stopped at Harris Ranch for lunch, a few miles south of stockyards where five thousand cattle munched on feed in the ninety-five degree temperature, awaiting, with not an inkling of foresight, their systematic slaughter.
Some fifty miles before Ashland, near the towering Mount Shasta, shafts of snow––even in the midst of summer––clinging to its ridges, Jeri, in the passenger seat, turned and said casually, “Oh, Clare, I forgot. The Bayberry Bed and Breakfast where we’ll be staying wrote that they were filled except for one room with a queen bed. I told them we’d work it out. I hope you don’t mind.”
I think my look was the dumbest I’ve ever painted on my face as I said, “I don’t mind if you don’t.”
“It’s fine with me,” she said casually, taking in the scenery, a panorama of amber cones that looked like miniature volcanoes all along the apron of Shasta, probably, I mused, full volcanoes thousands of years ago.
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