The O'Briens

by Peter Behrens

  Whenever Iseult was up at Arya Vihara, he lay awake worrying about her breaking down in the mountains or having an accident. She drove too fast and recklessly for the mountain roads. The old Lincoln was an ungainly car and she never bothered checking the tires or oil pressure or seeing whether the radiator was full.

  The truth is a pathless land.

  No. Truth was a car that could be relied upon to get over Casitas Pass without boiling over or breaking down. Truth was concrete reinforced with steel, tied down with sleepers, backfilled, and strong enough to withstand the storms and waves, probably for all their lifetimes.

  There was a quiet knock on his door. When he opened it, Margo was standing there with two bottles of the 3.2 beer that Lidia, their housekeeper, kept cool in the cellar.

  “Mother’s not home yet,” Margo said.

  “I know.”

  “Got any cigs? Let’s go out on the porch. Don’t wake up Frankie.”

  Out on the porch he used his jackknife blade to open the beer bottles. Margo took a sip. “Do you miss Daddy? He’s a crazy old bard, but I miss him. I miss my pals. She’s in love with the swami. I hate her, I really do.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “All her talk about the truth — that’s how people talk when they’re doing something bad. It’s creepy.”

  “He’s a teacher.”

  “You can believe that if you want to,” Margo said.

  They had been at Butterfly Beach almost three months by then but he felt more unhoused than ever. The night air was scented and chilly, smelling of flowers and brine.

  “Don’t you worry about Daddy?” Margo asked. “Where is he right now? Once she gets her stupid divorce Frankie and I will get tossed out of Marymount — she hasn’t thought that one through. They’d never let us back at Sacred Heart either. And the St. Mary’s Ball, forget it. My debutante season is shot. Tasch and Mary Cohen will be having fun all year and I won’t know any boys.”

  They finished the beer and flipped the red embers of their cigarettes down into the gravel driveway. After he went back to his room the stubborn moonlight slashing through the window still wouldn’t let him sleep.

  He had looked up divorce in reference books at the Santa Barbara Library. The only way to obtain a divorce in the province of Quebec was to petition for a private bill to be passed by the federal Parliament in Ottawa, and the only grounds were adultery. A Reno divorce was much simpler and took just six weeks’ residence in the state of Nevada. There were divorce ranches where people stayed. Such a divorce would not be recognized in Montreal, but would that matter if she never went back there?

  He rolled out of bed once more, pulled on dungarees and a sweatshirt. Their mother still wasn’t home. Margo’s light was off. The house was asleep. He quietly found his way downstairs. There was a flashlight in one of the kitchen drawers, but with the full moon he didn’t need it. He went barefoot across the lawn and started down the concrete steps to the beach. The tide was high. A wave broke on the seawall and the spray splashed his legs. Rolling up his dungarees, he stepped down onto the soft, permeated sand as the surf was running out. Another roller exploding against the concrete wall drenched him thoroughly. As the water raced off the beach he ran out with it and dove in.

  The ocean felt warm. A smaller wave rolled past, and almost without thinking he started swimming out to sea. The danger would be a wave strong enough to throw him back against the seawall. He saw the top of a big one approaching and ducked underneath. When he surfaced, he was thirty yards offshore. He saw the next wave coming, phosphorescent at its crest, and again he ducked under, swam through, and came up on the other side. He could feel the riptide, and knew he ought to swim back to the beach before it sucked him out any farther. Another roller was coming in. He was in a machinery of waves, each bigger than the last, or maybe it was just that he was getting tired of fighting them. Moonlight spread carelessly across the water. He would have to duck the next wave, then swim hard for shore to reach the steps before another wave slammed him into the wall.

  He felt the next wave pass over like something passing through his body, a dangerously seductive pull that took willpower to resist. He started swimming against the backwash spilling off the canted beach. He got his feet planted in loose, wet sand and struggled out against the fizzing rush. He was halfway up the concrete staircase when the next wave pulverized against the wall, lashing him with spray, but he made it to the top and stepped onto the grass.

  Back in his room, his limbs felt heavy. The sea had neutralized enough of his anxiety. For sleep the trick now was to focus on simple thoughts. Nothing emotional, just images of light in various rooms, in various patterns. Sunlight falling into rooms in their old Pine Avenue house. Chilly evening light in what could have been his nursery in the railway camp. Such memories were weightless, but his mind had retained them, or an impression of them, and by concentrating on them and letting go of everything else he could sleep.

  ~

  On the first of April they all went up to Arya Vihara for a picnic. The Lincoln had a cracked oil pan and was in the garage getting repaired, so they took the old station wagon. Mike drove. They started along Foothills Road, past fields of flowers at Carpinteria. Climbing Casitas Pass, he kept the station wagon in second gear, worried that the frail old engine might throw a rod. When they finally pulled into the driveway at Arya Vihara, he saw a dark young man in white clothes sitting on the porch of the cottage, reading a newspaper. The porch was deep and shady, with bougainvillea spilling over the rails, potted geraniums on the steps. The young man put aside the paper and stood waiting to greet them. He did not smile as she introduced them, merely nodding at the mention of their names.

  “And what have you brought?” he said, peering at the picnic basket Margo was carrying. “What goods are there, what treats have we to share?”

  “Krishnaji,” said their mother. “I’m so happy. I so wanted you to meet the children.”

  Krishnamurti didn’t seem happy or unhappy to meet them. His face looked as though it had at one time been punched or beaten. His nose was like putty someone had pushed and bent. His teeth were white and his handshake delicate. He wore sandals; his feet were large and the toes had a heavy, taloned look. The sleeves of his cotton shirt were rolled up and his forearms were the colour of mahogany. Pages of a newspaper were scattered all over the porch as though it had been torn apart by voracious reading.

  “I’ve promised the children a swim,” their mother was saying. “We’ll go to the pond, then lunch at the cottage. We’re so happy to be here, all together. Does that sound like fun?”

  Mike could hear something in her breathing: the rasp that started when she was tired or something was provoking her asthma. She kept saying she was happy; maybe she wanted to sound happy.

  “Oh, very much so,” said Krishnamurti.

  “Well, children, let’s head for the pond.”

  “Where do we change?” said Margo.

  Just then another slender Indian man and two white women came out of the cottage. The women were a mother and her middle-aged daughter and both were dark from the sun. Iseult took the girls inside to change in a bedroom while Mike changed in a bathroom.

  Had she told Krishnamurti she was planning to get a Reno divorce?

  Once upon a time his father had driven two hundred miles of railway grade through a sea of mountains. Where was he now? Maybe he was relieved they were gone. Maybe it was easier for him to be alone. Maybe all he wanted was to slide down the neck of a whisky bottle and disappear. Mike tried to imagine his father in a hotel room in New York City, voltage surging from a bottle and blowing all his circuits. What was wrong with him? Nothing. What was wrong with him? Everything.

  In single file they walked across a meadow flaming with orange poppies, his mother in the lead, Krishnaji following her, then Mike and his sisters and the two white women and the other Indian man. Orange butterflies twitched over the grass. When they came to the sycamore woods at the edge of
the meadow, the two women and the young Indian man disagreed about which was the best way to approach the pond without going near poison oak. Krishnamurti and their mother did not intervene, passively waiting for the matter to be sorted out. The other three could not agree and finally the man set off on his own. Krishnamurti and their mother followed the two women, the mother and daughter. The daughter was about Iseult’s age.

  “The truth is a pathless land,” Margo muttered as they traipsed through the fragrant, sun-heated woods. The pond when they reached it was fed by a stream that scrambled noisily over pebbles before deepening into a pool shaded by manzanita, cottonwoods, oaks, and sycamores.

  Who would go in first? No one seemed eager. It was hard to judge how deep it was.

  “I guess I will,” Margo said finally. “I’ll go in with Frankie.”

  Their mother unwrapped cucumber-and-tomato sandwiches and handed one each to Krishnamurti and the other young man, who had turned up at last. The two women refused the sandwiches she offered them.

  “You eat too much, Iseult,” said the older woman. “It may not show on you because of your rapid metabolism, but it’s not always good for the spirit, do you think?”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he heard his mother say.

  Margo and Frankie took off their tennis shoes and slipped into the water as quietly as deer. While they swam across the pond, then started duck-diving to see who could stay down longest, Mike lay on his back soaking up the hot sun and half listening to the women talking.

  “We really must return to India within the year,” the older woman said. “If you want to come along, Iseult, you must help us organize the resources for our trip, or it simply won’t happen.”

  “I think what Iseult needs,” said the younger woman, “is to spend more time alone and develop a simpler consciousness. I always feel that you’re scattered when you come up here. The aura is roiled, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Krishnaji hates to think you see him as simply another cause, like your poor Mexicans,” said the older woman.

  He saw his mother throw a glance at Krishnamurti, but he and the other man were eating their sandwiches and ignoring the women.

  “We’re not a charity case,” said the younger woman.

  “Krishnaji,” his mother said, “do you think it wise to travel so much?”

  “It does not matter,” Krishnamurti said. “Are there any pickles?”

  “He enjoys travel, Iseult,” said the daughter. “Travel refreshes him.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if people came to him instead?”

  “You really mustn’t interfere, Iseult,” the older woman said in a sharp voice.

  “Stop it!” said Krishnaji. “Your hectoring makes me ill.”

  “But we are concerned for you, Krishnaji,” the older woman said.

  “There is nothing wrong in her questions. She is an honest woman,” Krishnamurti said. “More than you, somehow.”

  The other young man gave a snort of muffled laughter. The two white women remained silent and Mike could sense their fury. They didn’t like her, she must have figured that out. Why did she come up here anyway? Was she in love with this Krishnaji, so self-possessed and gloomy, with his taloned feet and brown arms?

  The older woman stood up and her daughter got up too. “If you decide to stay for tiffin,” said the older woman, “do let us know, Iseult. We’ll need some things from the village.”

  The two women headed back through the sycamore woods. The girls were still splashing in the water. No one spoke. Minutes passed. Krishnaji and the other man lay on their backs on the dry, husky grass, hands clasped behind their heads; they were dozing. Iseult sat there. She wore a white linen dress and she wasn’t wearing stockings; she had slipped off her shoes and her feet were bare. He couldn’t really see her face under her sun hat, but she seemed to be watching the girls. She was very thin, he realized. Bony at her shoulders. Her calves and wrists were stringy and narrow. Frail. He’d never thought of her as frail before. He had supposed that all the weakness in the family was his father’s, but now she was weakening too.

  Dusty yellow shafts of sunlight dropped down into the pond. The girls came out of the water noisily, and Mike decided to go in. He wasn’t eager for a swim but he wanted to escape.

  The water felt cold at first after the hot sunshine, but really it was tepid. After swimming a few lengths he folded his body and dove straight down towards the bottom, where it really was cold, the light murky and golden. He could feel the pressure on his head as he touched bottom. It was peaceful. He wished he could stay down there, but his lungs were already hungry for air. He drove himself back to the surface, swam to the shore, and waded out.

  Margo and Frankie were lying on their stomachs on their towels. Their legs were golden. Krishnaji looked up at him and smiled slightly. His mother smiled at him.

  “I never had asthma after I met your father,” she used to say. “He cured me. He taught me to breathe.” It wasn’t really true — she’d had a few asthma attacks over the years. Not many, though. Now he thought he could hear that slight strained rasp behind her breath: the sycamore woods had stirred up her allergies. The pond was calm and he could see a skim of grey pollen dust on the surface.

  Instead of lying down in the sun, he began drying himself with his towel. They’d left their clothes back at the cottage. He could feel the two Indian men watching him as if they knew he was going to try something and they were curious to see what it was and whether he would succeed or fail.

  “Mother?”

  When she looked up from under her hat, he saw dark circles around her eyes. Now they could all hear her troubled breathing, and Frankie and Margo were sitting up on their towels. It was presuming a lot to take charge of things, but someone had to. He would drive them home, over the pass and down to the sea, away from the heat and dust of the narrow valley.

  “It’s time, then. We’d better go,” he said.

  His mother looked at him for a long moment and then nodded.

  The truth might be a pathless land, but the way home was clear, and he was determined to get them there.

  The other man stayed at the pond but Krishnaji walked back through the woods with them and waited by the car while Mike and the girls went into Arya Vihara to change. When Mike came out, Krishnamurti was standing with his foot on the running board. As Mike approached, Krishnamurti reached out and put his hand on Iseult’s forehead as though to see if she had a fever, and in this gesture there was a certain grace Mike had never seen before: gentleness rather than tenderness. The gesture implied distance somehow, removal, rather than closeness or intimacy. Krishnaji was being kind but impersonal — a doctor’s hand reaching out, cool and dry, not a lover’s, not a husband’s.

  Mike got behind the wheel and his sisters clambered into the back seat, their wet bathing suits wrapped in towels. As he fired the motor he overheard his mother saying, “Goodbye, goodbye,” to Krishnamurti.

  Mike pumped the clutch and meshed the gears as smoothly as they would go. He didn’t look at Krishnamurti but was aware of him stepping back from the car. “Goodbye! Goodbye!” the girls were calling as Mike shoved in the choke, dabbed the accelerator, and steered them out of there.

  ~

  Margo wanted to summon the doctor for an adrenaline booster but their mother insisted she didn’t need anything and said they should all go straight to bed, and it was true that her breathing had started sounding better as soon as they had left the Ojai Valley and came up over the pass, where they could see the ocean glinting and a purple mass of fog offshore.

  The next morning was Sunday, cool and white with fog. Mike pulled on his swim trunks and went downstairs before anyone else was awake. He ate an orange in the kitchen. Then he went outside and walked across the lawn to stand at the top of his wall, looking out to sea. The air was clammy but it was just a fog, not the dreaded white marine layer. Fog would burn off in a few minutes, and it was going to be a hot day. He ran down
the steps and plunged into the ocean and swam. When he came out, he was surprised to see his mother sitting on top of the wall. She had on one of his father’s thick old Irish sweaters over her linen skirt and she wore the little Leica on a strap around her neck.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Swimming.”

  “Well, I’m thinking,” she said.

  “What are you thinking about?” He picked up his towel and started rubbing himself down.

  For weeks she had seemed agitated, not herself, but she didn’t seem that anymore. He climbed the cement stairs from the beach and sat down on his wall a few feet from where she was sitting, his legs dangling over.

  “Do you know how beautiful you are, Michael?”

  “Oh jeez.”

  She picked up the camera, cranked film, aimed at him, and started shooting. Snap, snap, snap. He was so accustomed to being photographed — they all were — he did not consider asking her to stop.

  “Are you getting a Reno divorce?” he said, squinting at the lens.

  She lowered the camera and looked straight back at him. The full white light was behind her and he couldn’t tell if she was shocked, unsurprised, dismayed, or just tired. Then she raised the little Leica again and he heard the shutter click.

  ~

  Did she summon him or had he come out on his own steam? They never knew.

  She certainly never warned them. Maybe it was all his idea. Maybe she had known but wasn’t convinced he’d actually make it all the way. Maybe she thought the chances were good he’d disembark somewhere along the route and she’d get a wire or phone call from the assistant manager of some fine hotel in Chicago, Denver, or Salt Lake, news that she would do her best to conceal from the children.