I couldn’t sleep all last night thinking about it, so I got up at two A.M. and drove on the 10 and the 101, going between them on the 110 again and again, looking at the skyscrapers that are always standing no matter what is happening, shiny and bright like perfectly cut jewels, until finally I was sleepy and went home. I woke up at seven and have been waiting until mid-morning when Andrew will be at his office. I tried to limit my caffeine because I am already nervous enough, but not drinking coffee made me edgy, so it was a toss-up as to which was worse.
I am sitting on the couch with my back to the tree. Maybe I should just put the damn couch in front of the windows, but then I’d have to face the butchery head-on whenever I sit down. Draperies may be unavoidable now but that pisses me off because I’m not big on window treatment. Okay, focus on what I have to do. Or have decided to do. I try to form the question in my mind, to rehearse it, but the words slip around, and unrelated ones jump in and join sentences they should never be in, and I realize it is useless to try to make this a comfortable thing to do. I just need to breathe, if I can.
“Are you okay?” is Andrew’s hello when he answers his cell phone. He sounds very concerned, like something is terribly wrong. I guess he saw my number on his cell phone, and I don’t usually call him.
“Andrew, I’m broke.” The words come out so fast that the breath they were on barely left my body.
“Oh.” He sounds startled, like someone just handed him a curious prize.
“Can I borrow some money?” I realize that I am clenching my calf hard, like it’s the safety latch on a theme-park ride.
“Of course, but I don’t want it back.”
Relief is pouring into me, but it has to get past the words tumbling out. “I’m sorry to ask, it’s just I’ve been looking for commissions and a new store, but there hasn’t been anything, and I told you how Greeley’s isn’t paying for this order, and I’ve even looked for waitressing jobs, and I really will pay you back, is it just horrible that I asked?”
“Not at all, don’t worry about it, and I don’t want money from you. I told you you were like a daughter to me. How much do you need?”
The ease in his voice envelops me and I am able to get a real breath in. “A few thousand? To keep the wolves from the door until something turns up. I’m sorry to—”
“Stop, it’s fine. Do you have health insurance?”
“Health insurance?” He could have asked if I had a condo at the beach. “No.”
Andrew sighs. I have a feeling I have become a face to a statistic he has fought for and lost.
“I’m happy to get you the money, but this is embarrassing because I don’t have any on me. I never do, so it might be a while before I can get any to you. Will you be okay until then?”
“Yeah, I’m not being kicked out, I just don’t—” I annoyingly start to cry.
“Yvette, it’s okay, don’t worry about it. I’m glad you asked. I would’ve been mad if you hadn’t. Now just let me call you later today, okay, honey? I’ll call you later.”
His protectiveness feels so tangible, I should be able to take that to the bank.
I need to get out of my head. It’s been two weeks since I asked Andrew for money, and every day on the phone he says he’s getting it, but he hasn’t yet. I alternately lambaste myself for asking—maybe Suzanne was the better choice, after all—and wish he would just get it already because my request has been hanging in the air between us all this time, getting distorted in our minds, or mine at least.
Or maybe he’s not even going to give it to me. At what point do I stop believing he’ll come through? Fuck, I don’t want that to happen for so many reasons. I decide to give it another week, and if still nothing’s happened, then I’ll come up with plan B. Though God only knows what that would be.
But staying in my apartment is making me batty. I need to do something besides pursue work and create jewelry because neither are happening, but “free” is the deciding factor for me and in L.A. that means the Getty. I call Steve to see if he can join me. I considered calling Reggie, but since Betty’s been around it’s felt better not to. Steve and I are finally going to do that Zen for Christians retreat in a couple of weeks, so it’d be nice to see him before three full days of silence when I can let go of thinking. And worrying.
The late October afternoon at the Getty Museum is God’s own artwork, though the land that it is situated on helps. The promontory doesn’t jut straight into the ocean, but the area below it, Brentwood, becomes so much scenery as the sea takes all the attention. Steve and I walk through the antiquities, or ancestors as he calls them, then spend our time in a photography exhibit of the Mississippi Delta in the thirties, i.e., dire poverty, but softened by the exposure and printing. Looking at a particularly beautiful bleak view, I am transported to the unforgiving sun and land of my home state. The seasons’ sharpness overpowering anyone who lacks the resources for simple body-comforts defense. I have a moment of seeing my being broke as a split second in the hours of my life, a click in time with barely enough import to make a sound. Then the panicky feeling that my breath has been navigating around returns and it is all I can do not to run out of the gallery and call Andrew.
Driving home from the museum, I make it halfway before I am unable to resist any longer. I dial his cell phone and listen to Andrew’s silent voice mail message pick up. Fuck. Okay, I shouldn’t have called him anyway. I just need to be patient. Or seriously consider a plan B. A mile later, I press the redial button and his voice comes on the line.
“Where are you?” Like he already knew I was driving around, able to meet him.
“On Beverly near Fairfax, why?”
“Come to Crescent Drive at little Santa Monica, I’ll meet you at the gas station there.”
I turn my truck around. We drive toward each other, describing the rush-hour obstructions we weave through, the web of our words pulling us together at its center point.
I pull in to the gas station, look at the cars at the pumps, but don’t see him. Traffic on little Santa Monica is oblivious and insane.
“I’m here, where are you?” I stop my truck a good distance from the pumps. I have no idea what I’ll say if a serviceman walks over.
“One street over on Canon—meet me here.”
I don’t understand what we are meant to do once we meet so publicly.
As I turn onto Canon, Andrew says, “I see you.”
“Where?” I swivel around in my truck, searching for him.
“Behind you, the dark Mercedes-Benz.”
I spot an “affordable” version of that car just behind me. “That one?”
“No, the fucking big one, you think I’d drive that piece of shit? Two cars back.”
“Oh.” I look farther back, but still can’t find him. I feel pursued, a cops-and-robbers game, but we’re on the same team.
“Head north, cross Santa Monica, turn right, and pull in by the park there,” he says.
I feel the thrill of a cop forcing my actions, directing my drive. It makes me tremble behind my knees and farther up. And this cop is Andrew.
Life in L.A. is a constant car chase, so having one with Andrew doesn’t seem strange. Although really it is more of a car following. When I pull into a space by the park, he comes into view. Behind me. Approaching. Close. I wonder how he was able to stay invisible for so long. He is in my rearview mirror, then next to me in a parking space, his Mercedes engulfing my vision like his force does my life. When he gets out of his car, a giant no longer contained, the air splices into Technicolor, the traffic a soundtrack to his smile. Then he is up in my truck next to me, so close and real and big and I haven’t seen him in what feels like years and like seconds. I kiss his lips and neck and face, his well-cared-for skin, so unlike anyone’s I have known, as if the years settled like stardust into his cells, plumping them to become a soft radiant shield.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” he says, glancing around through the windows. “Take Rexford north.” I
half expect him to duck down.
We are robbers now from the cops, driving through Beverly Hills on a mission whose goal I’m unsure of. Andrew directs me through a series of complicated turns in the hills above Sunset, then stops us at the end of a cul-de-sac in front of a house hidden by a stone wall and a dense line of trees. No one is around.
“Do you know the people who live here?”
“No.” He looks startled, as if he might without knowing it. I realize this was a choice of anonymity he made, not the protection of a close-lipped friend. “Here. I know it took weeks to get it, but I hope it’ll help.” The envelope Andrew hands me is sealed. “It’s all I could get for now. Let me know if you—”
“Thanks, Andrew. I really will pay you—”
“Stop, I don’t want your money.”
A gray cat crossing the street stops upon seeing us, paw suspended midair, then walks on.
“When you asked me, I felt very paternal toward you. I wanted to help you. I always have.” He looks embarrassed and proud, like a major highway with a gentle yield that enables you to come on.
Once I can no longer see Andrew’s car receding, I stop at the red light at Santa Monica and Crescent, open the envelope and count three thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. The light turns green, and I drive with it on my lap, a piece of his protection left for me.
The city is deep into Friday night. Cars are no longer solo-filled for work, but hold pairs and groups. Andrew is driving home to his wife and daughter and son. The daughter whom he won’t know when she’s my age, I suddenly realize. Unless he reaches eighty-four lucidly, the age he’d be when she’s thirty. I wonder if he has thought about that, has let himself imagine how much of her life he’ll see and which of her years he’ll miss, as I at times in the past sixteen years have tried to imagine my life with my father in it.
And what happened to the dreams my father must have had for me when I was young? Where did he put them when he left and lived in Florida? Underneath, probably, deep down inside where he couldn’t find them. But maybe they flew up into the air when he died and merged with the sunlight so they could find me here in California where they have settled into my cells and will redirect their growth correctly.
36
Our phone calls have been platonic since Andrew gave me the money a couple of weeks ago, so I can talk to him without worry that it’s hurting anyone, we’re friends, there’s nothing wrong with that.
But tonight, before I leave for the retreat tomorrow, our conversation got…sexual. Which is hard. For it to and for it not to. Hard and easy and soft and dreamy and like we were made for it to. And I didn’t resist even though I should have, but it was like easing into a pool where the current is rushing all over me in different ways all at once, and it was so easy to say yes to seeing him when I get back from the retreat, as easy as taking a breath before going under water.
The scream is coming out of me as if the image I am seeing is connected to it. The man is in front of me, black clothes, large body, hands reaching for me, coming closer to the couch, bigger and nearer, I can smell his breath, and no one is coming to save me and he is about to grab, and I look at his face and see it finally. And the scream lets out one last burst, like a death rattle, and he disappears into the night, and I sit here holding myself, shaking quietly.
I can’t believe what I saw. Then I wonder why I didn’t remember it all this time. I feel pinned to the couch by the memory of the dream that has begun playing in my head. The dream that I had three years in a row when I was a child, always a spring night, and I knew each time that I was going to have it before I went to bed.
The first time, I wanted to leave the hall light on outside my bedroom, which annoyed Suzanne because it shone into her room, too, so she tried to convince my five-year-old self that I wasn’t going to have a nightmare that night, it didn’t work like that, as if she were so wise at nine that she could explain the mysteries of the dream realm to me, but I knew she was wrong, and once she was asleep, I slid out of bed and turned the light on.
And the nightmare did come, as I had known it would—I just didn’t know what it would be about until I had it. I was in the house with Momma, Daddy, and Suzanne. It was a regular spring night, like the real one, and the Wolfman was going to come. He lived in the neighborhood a few blocks away, had a wife and kids, and his job—like my daddy had a job that I also never understood—was to scare the people in Pass Christian. One family one night per year. And it was our turn. It wasn’t clear why the Wolfman was only starting to scare us now, but he was coming and no one seemed to care. Momma and Daddy weren’t around and Suzanne wasn’t fazed by it—the Wolfman, big deal. I was the only one who was scared, waiting for what would happen.
Finally he came. Up our front steps, across the porch and to our front door. His large dark form, black hairy hands and arms, cold mean eyes, all of him scratching at the front door, tearing at it, breaking the wood. I screamed and screamed as he tried to get inside.
I woke myself up screaming, then listened in the semidarkness. He wasn’t in my room, and Suzanne seemed to be sleeping peacefully across the hall; at least, I didn’t hear any screams from there. My parents were in their room with their door shut at the end of a really dark hall. I was too afraid to go there, so I lay back down and had my first night of insomnia. Held on to Teddy, his small body wedged into my side, and prayed Hail Marys as I stared at the ceiling. I didn’t trust that if I went back to sleep the Wolfman wouldn’t return, so I waited until sunup before I dozed off.
The next day I told Suzanne, but she brushed it off—a Wolfman, please. I never even thought to tell Momma and Daddy.
The next spring, on the night that I knew the Wolfman was going to come, I again waited until Suzanne was asleep, then turned the hall light on. I got into bed with dread. I didn’t know which was worse: the previous year when I knew a nightmare was coming but didn’t know what it was about, or knowing the Wolfman would visit again. I considered trying to stay awake, maybe that would keep him away, but I knew it was inevitable—we had to have our turn like every other family in town. Trying to prevent it would only make it worse. I held on tight to Teddy. I said Hail Marys over and over. With her around, I was supposed to have nothing to fear, but it wasn’t working. Maybe her power didn’t extend to Wolfmen. Then sleep came.
I was in Daddy’s work shed looking at a violin and Suzanne was on the swings where I was supposed to be playing when suddenly I heard her yell my name. I ran out and found her outside the shed’s door. The Wolfman was walking with determination into our yard. He had a sick grin on his face, like he knew he could get us easily and wasn’t going to waste his strength, but Suzanne and I broke into a run and he came after us. We ran around the house, him close on our heels, past the kitchen porch steps, past the den’s back door, past the dining room’s French doors, past the front porch, and round and round and round again, his breath on our backs, us barely ahead and only because we were familiar with the path, screaming for our parents, hoping they’d appear, until suddenly I woke up and I was in my bed, the sheets turned this way and that, and the house quiet and dark. I stayed up for the rest of the night, holding Teddy in my arms, knowing it was a dream, but also knowing it was somehow real.
The last time the Wolfman came, I asked Suzanne if I could sleep with her that night. I knew she’d say no, but it was a worth a shot. After she refused, I dragged myself into bed. The waiting was excruciating. I held on to Teddy and said lots of prayers, then next thing I knew, I was in the den and Daddy was in his big leather chair, the one from his study, which for some reason was downstairs, and he was listening to his jazz records, his eyes closed and head resting back. I was in my nightgown, the pale pink one with the short sleeves that had its own matching robe that made me feel so grown-up, but I had gotten too tall for it in the past year and Momma had thrown it away. I was at the back door, which was open, and the Wolfman had grabbed hold of my robe and was pulling with all his might, making the fa
bric taut against the back of my legs, pulling me harder and harder toward him. I screamed for Daddy’s help as I pressed my body back so I wouldn’t go tumbling out. My screams were louder than the jazz, so I knew he could hear me, but his eyes stayed closed, his head so relaxed, while I screamed and screamed and screamed, then suddenly Daddy disappeared as if he had never been there. The chair was empty, and my father was completely absent. The Wolfman let out a large howling laugh, and with one great tug, started to pull me out, but in a moment of inspiration I took off my robe, and with a startled look on his face, the Wolfman fell back, and I slammed the door shut, locked it tight, then woke up.
The sheet and blanket are wrapped around me as I sit on my couch looking outside at the thwarted yet growing tree and finally I understand that my father was never completely there even when he lived with us. I must have always known that, at least part of me, when I was a child to have had a dream where I had to save myself. Like I’ve been needing to save myself from the scream dream. And from other things I can’t stop seeing. Like my grandfather’s secretary, Miss Plauché, constantly walking backward to look at her past that she needed so badly to see and consequently missing her entire future.
I suddenly remember a day the summer I was ten when Suzanne and I went to our grandfather’s office to have lunch with him at the top of the big bank building in the private dining room where the maître d’ always brought a perfect red rose to Suzanne and me and the bartender would send Shirley Temples to our table as if we ate there regularly. Suzanne and I were waiting in our grandfather’s office while he was in the outer room, speaking to Miss Plauché.
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