by Marci Vogel
“Where’d you come from, April?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, “I don’t know.” It’s cold, and I begin to shiver. Victor holds me close as we walk.
Resolution
THIS MILLENNIUM BUSINESS is starting to get to me, and it’s still another year away, two depending on who’s counting. Last night I dreamed the world ended.
“How did it happen?” Victor asked. We lay side by side on our stomachs, arms pillowing our heads.
“Remote control. People were fooling around with the buttons, and out of boredom, someone flicked the channel. It was sort of anticlimactic, really. Nothing blew up, like how it is in the movies. Everything beautiful just kind of shriveled and faded away. People and animals, the moon, trees. Gradually, the picture got fuzzy, like a TV with lost reception.”
“They say dreams can be another facet of yourself,” Victor said, nuzzling his elbow against mine.
I leaned over to kiss him between the shoulder blades. “Maybe it’s time to trade in my antenna.”
Rooted
VICTOR’S TAKEN TO DIGGING in our garden plot. He takes out all the rocks, piles them up in rows. He’s getting the soil ready. He has me keeping a little compost bucket at home under the sink. Once a week, he dumps it out into a big plastic garbage container and moves everything around with a pitchfork. When the stuff turns black, he puts it in the ground.
He looks as if he’s gardened for years, but he says he doesn’t know any more than I do, he’s just more willing not to care if anything actually grows. He pulls out the weeds by hand. “What about the roots,” I ask, “won’t they sprout up again?”
He takes a shovel, digs the earth all around. He tosses big pieces of root into the back of the truck. There’s dirt everywhere, and Victor’s nails are filthy, but he doesn’t care. “That’s what soap is for,” he says.
One night I tried this recipe from the Sunset Easy Basics for Good Cooking that Aunt Dora had brought as a housewarming present. It was for a soup made entirely of root vegetables, carrots, potatoes, turnips, beets. The beets turned the whole thing magenta, it was like some kind of fairy-tale princess potion.
Heart
LIBBY’S BIRTHDAY IS THE DAY after Valentine’s. We were sitting in her new kitchen, huddled over a box of See’s. We had a butter knife and were cutting open each piece to see what was inside. We were being civilized. When we shared a place, we used to just bite in and put back the ones we didn’t like. If we got desperate, we’d suck the chocolate on the leftovers in the box, spitting out the fillings, orange or coconut or raspberry.
“Every year, my dad used to bring me this big, heart-shaped box of chocolates,” Libby says, passing me the knife. “I used to think I was the luckiest girl in the world until I realized every other kid got hers the day before. This arrived yesterday UPS, can you believe it? He really planned in advance.”
There’s a See’s factory next to the shop on La Cienega, and if you drive past at the right time, the whole boulevard smells of toffee.
Someone sent my mother a fancy two-pound box after Wilson died, but it was a disappointing assortment, lots of white chocolate and divinity fudge. My mother said it looked like an old-lady box. She threw it right out.
When I was growing up and even before that, my mother kept a heart-shaped tin in the bottom drawer of her nightstand. Sometimes she would open it and lay out the contents. There was her junior high class picture, autograph book, night school diploma. The box that contained my mother before she was my mother, before she was a wife, when she was still a girl, ready to make her life.
The February I was six, there was an earthquake. My mother had a bad flu, the only time I can remember her sick. She had a high fever. We both had fevers. My father had brought her flowers, white and pink carnations with sprays of fern and baby’s breath. They flew off her nightstand. The vase was a round glass bulb with a scalloped opening. The glass cracked and all the water leaked out.
Even when we still lived in the same house, my father always sent my valentine through the mail. He knew I loved receiving letters, and finding his card in the box was like a secret conspiracy between us, as if we didn’t know each other and someone in the outside world was sending me messages from afar.
Hugo and Victor walked in when they heard Libby and I laughing. They examined all our disregarded choices. “Mmmm, coconut,” they exclaimed, sharing a neatly cut piece between them.
Fuel
MY MOM’S GOT A BOYFRIEND,” I tell Libby. “He owns a self-service gas station. She helps him out on weekends. She doesn’t pump gas or anything, that’s all done with credit cards. She works the register in the mini-mart, stocks inventory, makes the place look good.”
“Did you check him out yet?” she asks. “What does Victor think?”
“Yeah, we met for dinner last week. He’s got kind eyes. He’s over the moon about her.”
“That’s to be expected,” Libby says. “Your mom’s a looker.”
“Well, he’s financially savvy, anyway. He owns the place, the land underneath, the whole corner. They keep each other company. I’m happy for her.”
“That’s great,” Libby agrees. “It really is.”
“Besides,” I add, “she gets her gas for free.”
Rhubarb
I HAVE THIS HABIT OF showing Victor all the produce I buy at the supermarket. Sundays I get there by early afternoon, the selection is still good. Victor comes over in the evening, and I sit him down and pull out all the best purchases. Tiny red-skinned potatoes, slender Japanese eggplant, artichokes, full and heavy with sharp, pointed leaves.
I noticed the rhubarb last week, the long stalks poking out of the bin like strange, shocking pink celery. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, how to choose it, even. I had cut an article out of the newspaper last spring, had filed it away. I was pretty sure it said rhubarb made great pie. “Excuse me,” I asked the men who were stacking cauliflower, “do you know how much rhubarb you need for a pie?” They looked blankly at each other, shrugged their shoulders, shook their heads politely.
I stopped an older woman pushing her cart. “Excuse me, do you know anything about rhubarb?” She puckered up like she didn’t like rhubarb.
“No,” she said.
I put four stalks into a plastic bag and placed them in my basket.
The leeks were in the same row. I had no idea what to do with those either, but they were fantastic, their green leaves stretched out like fans. I took three, all different sizes.
By the time I got to the checkout, my basket was full: five ears of corn, a bag of radishes, a pound of carrots, five apples, three oranges, two heads of lettuce—butter and red leaf—an orange pepper, three onions, one basket of mushrooms, a quarter-cut cantaloupe, two lemons, and an avocado. The bill was $92.47. I had some non-produce items, too.
Victor came over for dinner later, but I was too tired to cook. He made us quesadillas. He used the avocado. He boiled water for the corn.
“How long does corn take?” I asked. Neither of us knew, so I looked it up in Sunset Easy Basics. It said three to five minutes. It said corn was a summer vegetable. We ate cross-legged on the floor at the coffee table.
“I would have predicted you’d be a random corn eater,” Victor said, watching me gnaw around the cob.
After dinner, I showed him the leeks, the rhubarb, the waxy orange pepper. “Aren’t they beautiful?” I asked.
He laughed and touched them very gently.
“I’m going to make a pie and some soup.”
“That’s what you keep saying.”
Late the next afternoon, I dug out the newspaper article on rhubarb. Cut into half-inch pieces to make four cups, dredge with a heaping cup of sugar and one-quarter cup of flour, and sprinkle with ground ginger. It all looked a little dry and bitter, and I didn’t have any ginger so I added some juice from th
e oranges. Add flakes of butter, cover with a lid, and bake as usual. I’d never made pie, I didn’t know what was usual. I called Libby.
“How do you cook pie, I mean usually?” I asked her.
“I don’t usually cook pie. Why don’t you call your mom?”
“Libby, if my mom made pie, I’d know what to do already,” I said. “Listen, I have the recipe, I just don’t know how long to bake it or what temperature.”
“What kind of recipe is that?”
“Rhubarb,” I said.
“Rhubarb?” I could hear her puckering up over the phone.
“What’s wrong with rhubarb?” I asked, adding another cup of sugar to the mixture.
“Nothing,” she said. “Try three-fifty for an hour, I think that’s what you do for Bundt cakes.”
Sunset Easy Basics had a recipe for leek and potato soup, but it didn’t call for a pepper. I cut it up and threw it in anyway. It also said to use only the white part of the leeks, but it seemed a shame to waste the pretty green leaves so I added those, too. I didn’t have any potatoes.
I finished everything about an hour after Victor got there. Pepper seeds, orange peel, and the skins of onions filled the sink. I turned on the garbage disposal, and the familiar sound of spoons grinding up startled me like it always does. There was flour everywhere.
We ate the soup with my serrated spoons. Hard bits of leek caught like splinters in our mouths. We spit them out into our napkins. “Whoa, killer soup,” Victor remarked. “Pretty color, though. I like the little orange and green flecks.” He got up from the table, walked over to the refrigerator, took out tortillas, Jack cheese, and the rest of the avocado. “Want a quesadilla?” he asked.
I cut open the pie. Deep red liquid oozed out, leaving a hollow crust and squishy pieces of pale pink fruit. “Maybe we should use bowls?” Victor suggested, opening one of the upper cabinets. “Hey, I remember these.” They were the stoneware bowls I’d bought at the Japanese market the day of the earthquake, the ones with the swirls inside.
“Have any ice cream?” he asked.
“In the freezer. Vanilla bean.”
He scooped large spoonfuls onto each of our portions. “It’s really good, April,” he said. “Sweeter than I would have thought.”
Shift
IT WAS WILSON WHO took me to the DMV for my driver’s test. He taught me how to parallel park, how to change a flat, how to maneuver a stick shift on hills. “Use the emergency brake until your foot feels the clutch engage,” he told me. “Remember to turn your wheels when you park.”
The whole time he and my mother were married, Wilson drove Pontiac Firebirds. He made a living scouting locations, and his client list ran him all over Los Angeles, so he tore through a Firebird every few years. I watched him negotiate once at the dealership. He wrote down a number on a slip of paper, slid it over to the salesman, said, “My wife says no higher.”
“You got it, sir.”
Right before the B210 died, he told me to meet him Thursday night after work at one of the big car lots on Ventura Boulevard. “Nobody is going to take that thing as a trade-in,” said my mother.
“You never know when luck will be on your side,” Wilson said.
He was spot-on about the luck all right, it was St. Patrick’s Day, and everyone wanted to get out of there early.
We got the deal of the century, and I drove myself back to Mar Vista in a sporty new Civic, manual transmission, rear disc brakes, power side mirrors, moonroof with tilt, cruise control, clock.
Register
LIBBY AND HUGO REGISTERED at this high-end house-wares store. Or rather, Libby and I registered there. Hugo didn’t want any part of it. You go in, fill out a form, walk around with a wedding sales associate, trying to coordinate forks, knives, plates, napkins, all the stuff you never needed before you were married. They enter it into this new computerized system so procrastinators like Victor and me can purchase a gift last-minute without saddling anyone with duplicates. Which is how we found ourselves at the mall two days before Libby and Hugo’s wedding. That, and I still needed shoes to match my dress.
We take the escalator up from the parking lot, consult the mall directory, and head over to the first of five shoe stores. I pick out some strappy sandals, and while I am trying them on, Victor brings over a pair of urban hiking boots, soft black nubuck with cushioned soles and solid ankle support. “Lotta hills in San Francisco,” he says.
The boots feel like magic slippers after the sandals, so I buy them and wear them out of the store. They’re so springy, they propel my feet forward, no half steps. “How do you like my new boots?” I ask Victor, clicking the heels together.
“No place like home,” he says.
We make our way over to the computer registry that indexes all the couples who will be tying the knot in the next six months. We forget that Libby is short for Elizabeth, and so it takes three attempts to call up her name. We touch the letters on the screen over and over again until it spits out five pages of merchandise.
The list is organized in the following categories: kitchenware, cookware, cutlery, glass, flatware, accessories, table linens, stemware, barware, luggage, and basics. Listed under basics is a wine rack: 12 bottle, natural, $22.95, wants 1, has 1, item# 197-461.
Victor and I go in search of still-available gifts. My new boots keep catching on the display rugs, and it’s tricky to maneuver stops by the corners of stacked glass. Finally, we arrive safely at the kitchenware section, where we find white melamine bowls, 14 oz., 4.75″ dia. × 2.75″ h., item# 628-440. We imagine all the chocolate ice cream we’ll be eating over the next forty years in those bowls at Libby and Hugo’s, all the strawberry shortcake, the summer red gazpacho.
We carry a dozen up to the counter, and the clerk wraps each ten-dollar-and-fifty-cent bowl as if it were crafted of gold, places them in a cardboard box marked with big black letters, and tapes it all up to go. Victor takes the bag, takes my hand to keep me walking forward, and leads me in my new black boots with the cushioned soles out of the store.
Architecture
LIBBY AND HUGO WERE getting married in Sausalito, at an elegant, historic Craftsman just outside San Francisco. Wilson had grown up there, by the Marina, it’s where he got his start. He used to tell me about his first apartment, a cramped bachelor near Russian Hill. “It had a Murphy bed, and if the mattress was folded up and you hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, you could just about turn around, but on a clear day, you could see all the way to the water, and it felt like a million bucks.”
Not long after he married my mother, Wilson took us on a road trip, Jake and I tucked into the backseat of the Firebird. At the Golden Gate Bridge, he had us roll down all the windows. Welcome to the most magnificent structure on the West Coast, he announced, as if he were a tour guide.
I still had his ashes stashed away in my closet. The woman at the crematorium had told me it was illegal to scatter them, but I figured I’d take my chances. Victor picked me up just after dawn, and we started the drive north.
Rest Stop
ON THE WAY UP, we stop in Pleasanton to visit Esther and Saul, cousins of my father’s, the only relatives of his alive. They’ve been married fifty-three years. They are happy to see us. They’ve got crackers and cheese, chocolate babka, and Lipton iced tea.
“Maybe you’ll catch the bouquet,” Esther says, pouring iced tea into orange juice glasses and cutting into the babka. “Nuts, it’s still frozen inside,” she says.
“Never mind,” says Saul. “We’ve got those fortune cookies from when the kids took us out for Chinese last week. They’re still wrapped.”
“Look at April’s waist,” Esther remarks. “I used to have a waist like that.”
I ask Esther about her heart.
“I don’t know,” she sighs, “maybe I was expecting too much, but I’m tired all the time. It wasn’t a bypass, you know. Th
ose are easy. What they did, they replaced two valves in my heart. They’re plastic. During the day, I don’t notice it, but at night when I’m in bed, I can hear them working, click-click, click-click.”
“That must take some getting used to,” Victor says, and Esther says, “That’s exactly right.”
Saul offers me a cookie. I press it out of the cellophane and read the fortune inside:
Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you.
Promise
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL WEDDING. Libby is stunning, and Hugo looks good, too, in the tuxedo that came free with her gown. Victor and I are the only attendants, and we don’t mess it up. Victor has the ring ready at the right time, I hold the flowers upright. Libby and Hugo exchange vows under an oak tree, and after the ceremony, Libby’s parents host an impeccable lunch reception: garden salad with baby lettuce, roasted new potatoes, poached salmon, roast lamb with mint. The cake is chocolate raspberry with whipped cream filling. There is music and dancing. Someone catches the bouquet, then places it in my hands when no one’s looking.
Bridge
I HELD WILSON’S ASHES in my arms. The box was heavy with death.
“Victor, I get afraid,” I said, my throat catching. “Afraid I won’t want to live, like my dad.”
“I understand,” he said. He reached his arm around me and turned his body to shield me from the wind. “Truly, I do.”
We were standing on the bridge, looking down. The current ran fast. Tears wet my face.
He took the ashes from my hands, set them on the ground. “April,” he said, lifting my chin and touching the nape of my neck. His palm was warm. “You are so loved. And we’re here. Libby and Hugo. Your mom. Jake and Emily. The Joes, the aunts. Me.” He placed his hands on my shoulders, kissed me on the forehead, the eyes, the lips, each cheek. “Don’t be afraid, April. I promise, you’ll come around again.”