by Marci Vogel
What I wonder is, if you could use these theories or ideas to predict how someone is going to act, how they’re going to feel about a particular thing, a particular person. It seems to me if you could predict those things, you could save yourself a lot of grief.
My neighbor, the trumpet player, he unscrewed the drainpipe for me after work. We tried pulling the earring up with a bagless vacuum, but all we got were a couple of pieces of rust. He looked into the trap with a mirror and flashlight and said, “Don’t be upset if it’s not there, sweetheart.” I told him not to bother putting the thing back together just yet.
The next day, I woke up around five a.m. and wandered into the bathroom. I got down on my knees and bowed my head in the small cabinet under the sink. I shined the flashlight into the trap. It was there, four tiny pearls held together in gold. I had a little square of gum left from the taqueria where Math Man and I had gone on our second date. I chewed it fast, stuck it on the end of my toothbrush, and picked up my treasure. The trumpet player put the pipe back together later.
Darkroom
THERE’S THIS TINY CLOSET in the apartment. I set it up as a darkroom, it’s where I make my prints. It’s a pretty straightforward process. You immerse the paper in a tray of fluid until an image appears, slowly at first, then all at once, as if you were recalling something you forgot. The next step stops the image developing further, until you transfer the paper into the solution that fixes it forever, makes it permanent on the page.
The part that always surprises me is after it’s all done. The prints have been washed and dried, and I’ve taken them down, clip by clip, and I’m looking closely, really studying. It’s a mystery how I could have been right there and have missed so much, in my mind, I mean, not the actual shot. The photos from Fourth of July, for instance. I remember taking close-ups of Libby and Hugo, the new grill on the patio, but there’s also cut watermelon, confetti salad, Argos eyeing the burgers. And sitting over the pool—cross-legged atop the diving board—Hugo’s cousin, Victor, in a halo of sparklers.
Fidelity
LIBBY SAYS I SHOULD GET a dog. She says it’s a reliable means of assessment, walking a dog. “A man with a dog is a man who commits,” she says. “Look at Hugo. Plus, it makes a great how-we-met story.”
“But you met Hugo at a bar.”
“Not exactly. It was an urban planning holiday party.”
“Okay, but isn’t Argos Victor’s dog? I thought you guys were only taking care of him for a while.”
“That’s incidental. The point is, Hugo is forever.”
“Fine, but you’re forgetting one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m afraid of them. Dogs, I mean. Remember that Rottweiler mix that used to roam all over campus, Dice? Maybe I’ll eat you, maybe I won’t, just take your chances and roll.”
Libby tells me I’m being ridiculous. “Off-leash dogs are not aggressors, April. It’s only when they’re in their own territory that there’s any possibility of danger.”
I remind her about that stray in the newspaper who wandered into a comatose woman’s house and devoured her foot. “He was almost to the ankle before the daughter could fend him off, remember that?” I ask.
But she starts laughing, I can’t believe it.
“A woman lost her foot,” I say.
“For god’s sake, April, she was almost dead. It’s not like she’s going to miss it. Anyway, you’re not afraid of Argos.”
“Argos has those sad brown eyes and heart-shaped ears. He’s a keeper, it’s different.”
Center
WHEN I WAS A KID my feet turned in, and they thought ballet would fix it. I remember the teacher, her long legs and filmy pink skirt. She told us that when dancers spin, they pick a spot on the wall, and every time they turn, they immediately search out that spot again. They make of their bodies an axis, and fix their gaze over and over at the point of focus. It’s how real dancers keep their balance, no matter how many times they twirl.
Quick Study
SCHOOL’S BACK IN SESSION, and the whole traffic pattern changes, so mornings I take a different route to the museum. My position is more administrative than educational, but sometimes when we’re short on docents, I fill in for tours.
Back in high school, I had this boyfriend, Douglas, and all in all, he’d done a pretty good job for a kid. He used to carry around a big stack of books, even my heavy Gardner’s Art Through the Ages. We met junior year after he got kicked out of prep school for not applying himself. He didn’t do any better in public school, but he said at least they left him alone to read whatever he wanted. He was always reading something serious, philosophy or theology, or Dostoyevsky. He had a cat named Kierkegaard.
I’ve never been a great test taker, but Douglas helped me pass the AP lit exam. He’d picked up all these strategies at the private school and had a lot of time since he wasn’t studying himself. I remember reading The Plague and trying to understand existentialism. Douglas said the readers for those standardized tests only scan for the basics, so I should just write whatever it said in the CliffsNotes, but they didn’t really explain it except to say that eventually we are all going to die and, knowing this, we need to live each day as if it were the last.
Return
WE WERE AT EDEN to visit my grandmother. My mother wanted to skip it, but it was nearing the High Holidays, and the aunts guilted her into it. We ended up at the office, asking directions to her grave. The groundskeeper had worked there a long time, he was used to guiding lost relatives.
While he was tracking her down, I asked if he could look up my father. He was also buried there, but it had been years since the funeral, and I had no idea where to go.
The man located the correct plot in a big book and circled the area on a paper map. “Go down this path, see. Make a right, keep walking. It’s four over, eight up. Not from the bottom, that’d make him in the Garden of Hebron and he’s not there, he’s in Jeremiah. Take this map, so as you don’t pass it.”
I took the map, you never know when you might need a map like that.
“Jeremiah’s a bit of a trek,” he warned, “especially on such a hot day. Just remember four over, eight up. Here, take one of these,” he said, pressing a glass into my hand.
I looked to see the glass filled with white wax, a single wick in the center. “Yahrzeit,” he explained. “For remembering.”
“Thanks,” I said.
The five of us started out. It was sweltering.
“Oy, it’s hotter than hell,” complained Aunt Arlene. “I’m dying.”
“Shut up,” said my mother. “Don’t say that here.”
* * *
WE TRUDGED ALONG the road, and when we reached the sign that said Jeremiah, we started searching. We stepped around beloved mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers. Dearest wives and daughters. We stepped around the fathers and the sons, brothers and sisters, rest peacefully eternal.
I spotted the plaque first.
The aunts and my mother came over to see.
“U.S. Navy?” said Aunt Estelle, puzzled. “In a Jewish cemetery?”
“It looks like he had no one, it looks like he was alone,” said Aunt Doris.
“Oh my god, I’m never coming here with you again,” said my mother.
I stared hard, pressed my lips tight, swallowed deep.
Rafael Goldring. 1932–1986. U. S. Navy.
“Okay, let’s go,” I said.
We were, all of us, quiet back to the car.
Later, I look up Jeremiah. I don’t have a prayer book, so I use a dictionary: A major Hebrew prophet of the sixth and seventh centuries. One who is pessimistic about the present and foresees a calamitous future.
Just before the Days of Awe draw to a close, I light the glass yahrzeit candle like the groundskeeper told me. The whole cylinder glows. The next morning, I wake
up to find the wick has gone out before all the wax has burned. I light the candle again, and this time the calendar pays no attention. The candle burns straight through into the next day, ordinary, holy.
Birthday Suit
EVERY SEVEN YEARS we become completely new people. I read about it in one of Libby’s parents’ magazines. Her parents always keep all these magazines on their den table, it’s like the dentist’s office, except for you don’t have to get your teeth cleaned. Last time I was there, I was reading this article that explained how the body goes through this seven-year cycle where the cells completely regenerate themselves. From the time we’re born until the time we die, we’re constantly shedding old cells until we’ve got a whole new body, a whole new skin. I’m twenty-eight today, so I guess that means I’m starting over, fresh.
Seismic
IT WAS SOMETIME AFTER Labor Day. I was getting over Math Man, tall with a good job, half a dozen blue chamois shirts out of the J. Crew catalog, and a no-girlfriend policy. Libby set me up with someone she knew from publicity, his fiancée had broken it off a month into the engagement.
He reviewed films for a Hollywood circular. Our first date, he told me my furniture arrangement was dysfunctional. We were sitting on opposite ends of the couch after the movie, and there was nowhere to put his feet. “Most people put their coffee tables here,” he said, pointing the tip of his Converse at the empty space. Critic Man, I called him.
“Thanks for the advice,” I said.
“It’s not like I don’t have a coffee table,” I told Libby the next day. “It’s just if I put it in front of the couch, it blocks the front door.”
“Forget it,” she said.
I spent the next evening after work moving all the furniture around. I shoved the love seat opposite the couch and wedged the coffee table in the middle. Half the apartment was empty then because everything was crammed into one area, but I didn’t know how to fix it, so I stopped and went to bed.
Around four in the morning, the earth started shaking. I ran naked to the doorway, crouched down, and covered my head with my hands. My organs felt as if they were swishing inside my body. After all was still, I looked in the living room and was startled to see everything so neatly rearranged in the darkness.
The phone lines were down most of the day, but Libby got through about noon. “I’m fine,” I told her. “Everything’s in a different place, but it looks a lot better this way.”
She told me she was sending Hugo’s cousin over to see if there was any invisible damage. “Victor knows about these things,” she said. “He used to bolt foundations.”
For the last couple of months, ever since he got back from Portland, Victor’s been staying in Libby and Hugo’s garage, where he builds furniture for people who can afford to hire designers. There’s a studio off the backyard where he keeps his stuff, his clothes and books, but mostly, he lives in the garage with Argos and the sawdust. Inside the house, there are all these original pieces he’s made, tilted bookcases, papier-mâchéd tables, three-legged chairs. It looks like a layout from a space-age bachelor pad magazine.
“What’s with the names?” I asked Libby when he first arrived.
“Yeah, well, their grandfather worshipped Victor Hugo, it was his dying wish.” She tells me they were born on the same day, two sons to two brothers, and the old man had insisted.
“It’s a little weird, him staying with us,” Libby says, “but there’s no denying the guy’s got skills. He’s fixed every broken thing in the house, rebuilt half the kitchen, and he’s only been here two months. Plus, we have all this fab furniture, at least until it gets shipped. Hugo adores him, and Victor’s as loyal they come. He’d take out anyone who ever did Hugo wrong, even me, I bet.”
“Everything seems fine,” Victor said later that afternoon, taking a look around my apartment. “The furniture’s a little crowded up in this one corner, but that’s the way it goes with these dingbat units. Typical apartment space, it’s hard to make the arrangement work. You’ll be all right, though. You’re safe.”
“Thanks for coming by,” I said.
“Easy done,” he said. “Hey, do you want to grab a bite? That shaking was really something. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “Let me get some cash. In case the credit card machines are down.”
The only place that was open was the Japanese market on Centinela, so we stopped in and ordered udon at the food court. On the way out, we passed by the discount table, and I had just enough in my wallet to buy a set of four small bowls, stoneware with swirled centers.
Victor dropped me off in front of my building. “Thanks for the noodles,” he said, leaning out the passenger-side window. “You were right about those ATMs.”
“Sure thing,” I said. “Say hi to Libby and Hugo.”
“Let me know if you need help moving,” he added, as if reading the future. “I’ll bring the truck.”
The next day I started looking for a new place. I don’t know if it was the bad floor plan or the earthquake that made me decide, but it was time.
Yellow Tape
I FOUND A NEW APARTMENT pretty quick, a one-bedroom upper about a mile west. Victor came with his truck and moved me in about half an hour.
“Much better,” he said, looking out the window and breathing in deep. “You can smell the ocean from here.”
We walked to the corner store for sandwich fixings. All around there was bright yellow safety tape still up from the earthquake: CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION. We walked right on by them, and Victor told me about this project he worked on once, east of downtown.
“The houses were in a hundred-year flood zone, so they had to be raised four feet off the ground,” he said. “It made for a steep climb to the front porch.”
I imagined entire houses ripping apart from the ground, rolling down the street, out of the neighborhood.
The clerk rang up our stuff, and Victor took the bag. On the way back, we passed by a community garden. “Hey, look at that,” Victor said, reaching for my hand. “Are you good at growing things?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I never tried.”
“Tomatoes are pretty easy to start. I can build you a trellis if you want.”
I called Libby after he left.
“I don’t know, April,” she said. “Look, he’s Hugo’s family and in a few months he’ll be mine, too, but I’ve been taking about five messages a day from some chick in Eugene and she’s not exactly wishing him happy trails. Just be careful, okay?”
Bet
LEO FINE LIKES TO TELL the story of how my father placed his right hand palm down on a stack of cousin Joe’s law books one night and swore he’d never get married.
“We’d get together for poker,” Leo says, “all of us hitched and him free as a bird.”
“What happened?” I ask one day.
“Your mother,” Leo says. “He couldn’t resist her.”
Nine Lives
HALLOWEEN, MY MOTHER always bought the candy early. The whole month of October, we’d have to keep buying new bags because it would keep getting eaten. Now she says she can’t be bothered. She puts out an empty bowl with a sign, Take One, turns out the lights, and goes to bed.
I didn’t have any big plans, so when Libby asked if I’d come over to watch the house and pass out candy, I said I would. “There are a bajillion kids in this neighborhood and the yard is like a construction zone right now. Plus I’m worried about Argos. He can have a fierce bark.”
“What about Victor?” I ask.
“He’s been MIA all day. You’d be doing us a huge favor, April. Hugo and I can’t get out of this client party, and I’d feel a lot more secure if someone was there. Stay the night, we’ll go for brunch in the morning?”
“Of course,” I tell her because an empty house is better than an empty apartment with
no trick-or-treaters. Halloween evening, I dress in black, then drive by Rite Aid to pick up an extra bag of candy, a pair of fuzzy cat ears, and matching cat tail. By the time I get to the house, they’ve already left. Argos is whining at me from behind the back door. I let myself in, give him a quick scratch behind the ears, and he follows me to the bathroom, where I draw whiskers on my face with one of Libby’s eyebrow pencils and arrange the cat ears on top of my head. I wave the cat tail at Argos. He wags back.
I can’t find the stash of candy Libby says she’s left in the kitchen, so I open my bag into a big Tupperware and take it out to the front porch. Someone is already there. I scream and drop the bowl. Fun-size bars scatter everywhere.
It’s Victor. He stands up fast and switches on the outside light. He’s wearing a tuxedo jacket and a white hockey mask covered with antique electrical parts. He looks like some nineteenth-century lab experiment. “April, what are you doing here?”
“Libby asked me to come by the house. She didn’t think you were around,” I say, still startled.
“Somebody needed to hand out treats,” he answers. “There are a zillion kids in this neighborhood.” And then, “I’m sorry I scared you, April. You make a good cat. Doesn’t she, Argos?” Argos wags his tail. The costume one is in his mouth.
Victor takes off his mask and kisses me. My whiskers leave black streaks on his nose. Argos circles himself onto his blanket. We go inside, leave the candy and the bowl.
Counter
VICTOR CALLED AGAIN. He left a message on the machine. “Look, I know Libby’s got her doubts about me, and maybe she has good reason. But I’d really like to see you again and explain. Call me back sometime?”