by Marci Vogel
We were on our way to Marin County, to Libby and Hugo’s engagement party, headed north on Highway 5 just past the Grapevine, when I drove away. I left him at a Denny’s. It wasn’t nice, but I couldn’t stand it anymore, being so close to someone who couldn’t stay awake.
I pulled in to the bed-and-breakfast just as it was getting dark. “Where’s Steven?” Libby asked, meeting me out front.
“Out. He needed a cup of coffee.”
“Well, don’t forget your lights,” she said. “They’re on.”
Fortune
THE PARTY WAS AT Libby’s parents’ house in Corte Madera. They’d hired a fortune-teller for the occasion, inside a tent on the back deck. You went in, sat down, and she told you whatever you wanted to know. Or whatever she suspected you wanted to hear, which is maybe the same thing as far as divination goes.
When it was my turn, she asked if I’d ever had my cards read, and I told her about the Irish psychic who once predicted a small family of five.
Everybody’s got a story, I guess. A clairvoyant’s talent is figuring it out before you do. I’ve got this picture of my grandmother taken around the time of her engagement, and whenever I look at it, I’m surprised at how much bigger she seems, her strong arms, her round face. My grandmother, certainly, but looking so much like me, it makes me wonder how my arms will look after fifty years.
I bought this book once on how to read the future. THE SECRETS OF PERSONAL FULFILLMENT ARE IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND. That’s what was written on the back cover, anyway. It ended up being a lot more complicated. For one thing, I couldn’t decide if my fingertips were square, conic, or spatulate, and the only distinguishing mark I could make out was a big gap in the middle of my head line, which probably means some future brain injury or something.
The woman in the tent turned out to be more spiritual advisor than fortune-teller. She didn’t have any tragic news about my head, but she didn’t seem too enthused either, especially considering the engagement party setting and the fact that I’m supposed to have my whole life ahead of me. She said this was not the year to talk about marriage. That, and I should take care to avoid precipices of any kind.
Vocal
IT SEEMS LIKE YESTERDAY Wilson and I were at ages where we both knew everything. It made it hard sometimes to have a regular conversation.
“Don’t ever buy bread on a Wednesday,” he’d warn. “That’s the delivery guy’s day off, the bread’s not fresh.” He knew this because he’d driven a bread truck for San Francisco Sourdough way back when.
“I’ve been alive fifty-three years, April,” he’d say. “Do you know how long that is? More than half a century.”
He was always so calm.
I was sixteen, so I’d get upset. Scream and yell about whales, flag burning, the president. I never argued unless I was sure I was right. These days, I keep my mouth shut.
Aunt Arlene, she’s just the opposite. “I used to say nothing,” she says, “sit around, feel sorry for myself. No more. If I’m upset, everyone knows it.” She tells me this story:
“That doctor of Wilson’s, Mr. Know-It-All, I called him up, I yelled in his ear for half an hour. Who are you, I says, to tell a man, without his family there, without his wife, he’s going to die this week? Let me tell you something, Doctor, I says, you may know about cancer and ureters and renal failure, but next time you decide to play god, just remember me—ramming your ass. I hung up in his ear.”
My mouth was wide open. “Wow,” I said. “Good for you, Aunt Arlene.”
“You should try it sometime,” she said.
“Okay,” I said. “I will.”
Anchor
LIBBY AND HUGO BOUGHT a fixer-upper in the Valley, and I rented the one-bedroom downstairs from our old apartment. Except for my bed and dresser, all the furniture had been Libby’s. Things were looking pretty bare, so I bought this little pine shelf to hold candlesticks, salt and pepper shakers, homey things I didn’t even have. When I pounded in the first nail, the drywall crumbled underneath the hammer.
I called my mother’s cousin, one of the Joes. There are about six or seven people in my family with the name of Joe, all named after my mother’s uncle, who was a printer and who died before I was born. I was supposed to be Jody, but my father refused. I’m named after April, my father’s sister and the only aunt I never met. She died when she was young, of scarlet fever, they really died of those things back then. That’s why I’m April, even though I wasn’t born until September.
The Joe I called is a retired machinist.
“You’ve got a drywall,” he says. “Get yourself some anchors from the hardware store. You got a hardware store around there?” I told him I thought we had them in Mar Vista.
“Alrighty,” he says. “First, put in your anchor. Make a little hole to get it started. Then hammer in your nail, and you’re set.”
It took me a while to get to the hardware store down the street. The shelf sat on my floor for weeks, and every guy who came into the apartment had some advice for free. The building manager and cable hookup guy both tried knocking on the wall for studs. Hugo and my brother, Jake, also named for Joe, told me to get some toggle bolts. When I finally got to the hardware store, the clerk gave me a whole rundown on how to use the anchors. I listened like I hadn’t heard it all before.
The anchors worked. I put the thing up myself.
Optics
I NEEDED MY VISION CHECKED. It wasn’t like I’d heard, objects appearing unclear, it was more like my eyes were growing tired, it seemed all I wanted to do was close them, take a nap, especially when I was doing close-up work, really paying attention.
“Go to Leo Fine,” my mother said. “His younger son’s working with him now. They make a good living, optometrists.”
It turns out Fine & Fine is on the approved providers list, so I make an appointment.
“Who referred you?” asks the receptionist when I walk into the office.
“Her mother,” answers Leo, entering from the back examining rooms. He looks surprisingly official in a white coat. “April,” he greets me, “you’re the picture of Lena. You must hear that all the time.”
“More than once,” I say, following him past a display case of designer frames.
“We were so sorry to hear about Ezra. Please,” he says, “have a seat.” Leo motions me into a high black chair, swings a big machine with two empty holes in front of my face. “Look here,” he directs, flashing blurry letters onto a screen. When the letters begin to solidify, he flips through a series of lenses and asks me to read what I see.
“It’s too bad James isn’t here,” he remarks as I call out letters on the eye chart. “His fiancée’s parents needed a lift to LAX. Remind me to give you their new number, I’m sure they’d love to get together.”
He pulls out another instrument, asks me to steady my chin against a metal rest, then shines a sliver of light into my eyes. “This gives an amazing view,” he says, and I wonder what else he can see.
“One more test, and we’re through. Keep very still,” he cautions, aiming a sharp puff of air into each eye. I barely blink.
Leo rolls the equipment away, pulls a notepad and pen from his pocket. “The problem is farsightedness. It’s a minor correction. I can write a prescription, but with such slight astigmatism, lenses are a trade-off,” he explains, drawing a diagram to show why everything in the distance will blur once I put on glasses.
Drive
MY MOTHER’S COUSIN JOE, not the fix-it Joe, the lawyer, wants to see me married to an honest, dependable type, well employed with potential. Live in the suburbs, drive a Volvo station wagon like each of his twin daughters. I tell him the three dependable guys I’ve dated were dirt-poor and the ones with promising careers were also good liars, but Joe still keeps trying to set me up with the sons of partners in his firm.
I actually said yes, a couple
of years ago after a breakup. He was already clerking, a bright Volvo future ahead of him, and what was wrong with me, I hated the way his mouth tasted.
We’d been going out about a month, and of course the whole family knew about it.
“Bring him to Holiday,” my mother’s voice rang through the phone.
“I don’t want to make a big deal,” I said.
“It’s just us,” she insisted.
“Fine,” I said.
My brother, Jake, warned me there’d be expectations. “April,” he said, calling on the sly, “why don’t you ride with Emily and me? That way, you’ll have an easy out.” They picked me up in the Jetta, and we headed over to Aunt Arlene’s.
Volvo Man showed up wearing a navy sport coat and creased trousers. He brought supermarket Chardonnay and stargazer lilies, and won everybody over in about six seconds.
I took the wine and bouquet to the kitchen. Everything in there is white with little blue ducks, wallpaper, curtains, backsplash tiles. Aunt Arlene’s been collecting for years, she’s got duck-emblazoned pot holders, dessert molds, a graduated canister set. Even ceramic napkin rings, hand-painted with indigo feathers. I counted 168 ducks, not including the ones on the vase and corkscrew handle.
The aunts came in, finally, to plate the gefilte fish. They cornered me by the sideboard, stenciled with mallards. “You should learn to like him better,” they scolded, but as soon as the dishes were cleared, I asked Jake and Emily to give me a lift home.
Libby still thinks any guy who drives a four-door is a good bet, but I think it’s not the model so much as how someone handles the wheel. Wilson used to talk about this coupe he once owned, a 1956 Hudson Hornet. “I must’ve gotten a hundred dollars’ worth of tickets in that car,” he’d say. He always made it sound worth it.
Memorial
EVER SINCE WILSON DIED, I read the obituaries. He used to read them every day, I never asked why. He always read the entire newspaper, so it never seemed strange. He saved the comics for right before he went to sleep.
It started when I had to find a place that would do cremations. They have all these mortuary ads next to the funeral announcements in the newspaper, and while I’d wait for an undertaker to answer the phone, answer all my questions, I’d start reading the rest of the page, all the obituaries. Now it’s a regular routine.
Every person’s obituary has its own little story and whenever I read one, it feels solemn like a ceremony, and my mind starts composing silent elegies, something crazy like, I know you now, even if it’s only a little bit, and I know it’s strange, but I didn’t before, and I might never have known you, unless somebody had written these lines. Who knows how many people are missing you this very minute, late at night or early in the morning, drinking tea with milk, reading about the life you had, and wondering how are your loved ones doing?
Bugs
ABOUT A MONTH AFTER I first left home, my left shin began to itch. I scratched it for a week until finally it swelled into a pale blue lump. Libby drove me to emergency. The doctor took out a long needle, told me it was okay if I screamed. He stuck it deep into my leg, drained out the infection. “You’ll need to take antibiotics for ten days,” he said. “Be sure to finish the prescription.”
“It’s probably one of those big spiders in that apartment of yours,” Wilson told me. “They sit up on the ceiling, waiting for you to fall asleep.”
“No insecticide,” I insisted. “That stuff should be against the law.”
This spring when Wilson was dying, the motion detector lights at the house stopped working. “I drove up and nothing,” my mother said. Joe had the system disconnected and hooked up twice before figuring a bulb was burnt out. While he was at it, he installed an electric garage door opener, along with a timer for the porch lights. The lights come on automatically when it gets dark. This summer, my mother will look outside her window and see the moths flying around.
“You’ve got to get good habits,” Wilson used to tell me. “Lock the screen doors at night. Keep out the bugs.”
My habits have never been particularly good. I leave the iron on all day, it used to drive Libby crazy. And I’m always locking my keys in the car. Wilson bought me a membership in the Auto Club because of this, and also because sometimes I forget to turn off my lights, especially if I’ve been driving at dusk. I’ve run down three batteries that way.
There aren’t any screen doors at my new apartment, so I use this portable alarm Wilson gave me last winter. My mother said he walked up and down the mall searching for it. “He knew exactly what he wanted,” she told me. The device has a flat metal piece that fits between the door and the jamb and screams at 120 decibels if an intruder tries to get in. It fits perfectly into my palm, and during the day, I hook it to my key chain. “There’s a stainless steel ring you can pull if anyone attacks,” Wilson had said.
Now that I was living alone, I was thinking about getting a bird, not some noisy, squawky bird, just another voice to welcome me home at night. A canary maybe. Libby and I had seen some vintage cages on Abbot Kinney, and a bird seemed easy enough. I went to the library, flipped through a book on care and feeding: Sunset Easy Guide to Birds. There were close-up photos showing eyes and beaks, claws being clipped. It looked as if you would have to hold the bird pretty close if you were going to groom it yourself. Another page showed pictures of possible diseases, birds with feathers matted together, parasites crawling around. I got to thinking maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.
My new place is on the ground floor. It has an inefficient layout, but it was the only vacancy in the building, and right now it’s just too much effort to move completely. At night, I jam a chair under the doorknob in case the alarm stops working and anyone tries to break in while I’m asleep. The first few nights, I kept the windows locked, until the air grew so stale, I decided it was worth the risk. Now the verticals click together whenever the breeze blows in, along with a low trumpet sound from the Swedish woman’s husband a few doors down. He’s a studio musician and practices every afternoon from eleven to three. They’re expecting a baby in June.
It’s not like I get a lot of calls, but the answering machine was Libby’s, so I bought a new one. You never know who’s going to want to talk to you while you’re away. When Wilson was dying, I watched him dial my number one morning. He left me this message: “Hi, doll. I’m at the hospital. Give me a buzz when you get in, tell me what’s happening.” When I got home that night, I took the tape out so it wouldn’t get erased. Sometimes I drop it in the new machine, push the play button, and listen to Wilson’s voice.
The floor plan was never going to work, but I finally fixed up the new place. One of the Joes donated a matching couch and love seat, and I went to Ikea for lamps and a coffee table. I bought plants and pillows, hung up my paintings from art school. Libby said I should have a housewarming party, so I invited my mother, the aunts, Jake and Emily, a few neighbors, some people from work. I cooked for three days. The trumpet player, he brought a friend. Libby calls him Motorcycle Man. I shook his hand, took his leather jacket, his riding helmet. I showed him the pictures on my walls.
The next day, I caught a cold. My throat hurt, there was a tightness in my chest. I drove to Trader Joe’s for tissues, orange juice, and chicken soup. I was back in my pajamas when the phone rang. I let the machine pick up. “Hey. It’s me,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Call me back when you can, okay? I’ll take you for a spin on the Triumph.”
Wilson used to tell me that love was like a fly in soup. “It comes when you least expect,” he’d say whenever a date didn’t work out. “That doesn’t make it something you should necessarily eat,” my mother would quip. She would have killed me if she found out I was riding on the back of a motorcycle, but I returned the call anyway.
After I got to feeling better, we went to an art-house movie, drove up Pacific Coast Highway for fish tacos. We passed by this little house i
n Santa Monica, on Twenty-First. He told me he’d wanted to rent it, but it was only available for a year. He said he wanted something more long-term. I pressed in close to his back, blinked my eyes against the wind. It was strange having someone stay at the new place. I didn’t put the chair up under the knob or use the alarm. He left before dawn.
Later that morning, I baked some bread. I put the kettle on the fire, sprinkled yeast over lukewarm water. I opened the window to hear my neighbor practicing. The steam whistled, the yeast foamed, the trumpet blew.
Evolution
WE GET THESE BEETLES every summer, June bugs they’re called, only they don’t show up until July. Libby despises them.
“It’s an infestation of idiocy, they zigzag aimlessly, bash into everything, and wind up flailing on the floor.”
It’s her pragmatic streak, I can’t blame her protesting the inefficient. Even when we were in undergrad, Libby didn’t waste time with unpaid internships or extra credit. She works downtown as a planner with the Department of Water and Power. She’s the only woman on her team and already shares an office overlooking the 110 Freeway.
“At least they make decent dog entertainment,” Hugo says. “Argos snaps at them until they fall on their backs. Then he paws them right-side up, and they fly away like they were never dead.”
“That’s what’s so infuriating,” Libby says. “They go against Darwin, these insects. It’s like survival of the most unfit.”
Libby’s measure of truth can be exacting, but once she’s a friend, it’s forever.