So Long

by Lucia Berlin

  Their house in Mexico had been made of concrete block, but the beams and counters and cupboards had been made of cedar wood. First the big room—the kitchen and living room—was built. They had planted trees, of course, even before they started building the house. Bananas and plums, jacarandas. The next year they added a bedroom, several years later another bedroom and a studio for Anna. The beds, the workbenches and tables were made of cedar. They got home to their little house after working in the field, in another state in Mexico. The house was always cool and smelt of cedar, like a big cedar chest.

  Anna got pneumonia and had to go to the hospital. As sick as she was, all she could think of was Sam, how he would get along without her. Loretta promised her she would go by before work, see that he took his medication and had breakfast, that she would cook him dinner after work, take him to the hospital to see her.

  The terrible part was that Sam didn’t talk. He would sit shivering on the side of the bed as Loretta helped him dress. Mechanically he took his pills and drank pineapple juice, carefully wiped his chin after he ate breakfast. In the evening when she arrived he would be standing on the porch waiting for her. He wanted to go see Anna first, and then have dinner. When they got to the hospital, Anna lay pale, her long white braids hanging down like a little girl’s. She had an IV, a catheter, oxygen. She didn’t speak, but smiled and held Sam’s hand while he told her how he had done a load of wash, watered the tomatoes, mulched the beans, washed dishes, made lemonade. He talked on to her, breathless, told her every hour of his day. When they left Loretta had to hold him tight, he stumbled and wavered as he walked. In the car going home he cried, he was so worried. But Anna came home and was fine, except that there was so much to be done in the garden. The next Sunday, after brunch, Loretta helped weed the garden, cut back blackberry vines. Loretta was worried then, what if Anna got really sick? What was she in for with this friendship? The couple’s dependence upon one another, their vulnerability saddened and moved her. Those thoughts passed through her head as she worked, but it was nice, the cool black dirt, the sun on her back. Sam, telling his stories as he weeded the adjacent row.

  The next Sunday that Loretta went to their house she was late. She had been up early, there had been many things to do. She really wanted to stay home, but didn’t have the heart to call and cancel.

  The front door was not unlatched, as usual, so she went to the garden, to go up the back steps. She walked into the garden to look around, it was lush with tomatoes, squash, snow peas. Drowsy bees. Anna and Sam were outside on the porch upstairs. Loretta was going to call to them but they were talking very intently.

  “She’s never been late before. Maybe she won’t come.”

  “Oh, she’ll come … these mornings mean so much to her.”

  “Poor thing. She is so lonely. She needs us. We’re really her only family.”

  “She sure enjoys my stories. Dang. I can’t think of a single one to tell her today.”

  “Something will come to you….”

  “Hello!” Loretta called. “Anybody home?”

  Our Lighthouse

  Hi! I was dreaming! But not a dream with pictures. I could smell my mother’s Swedish cookies. Right here in this room. Right here.

  We lived in a lighthouse, me and my seven brothers and sisters, on the Sainte Marie River. There’s no place to put things, much less hide them, in a lighthouse, but my ma sure could hide cookies. I always found them though. Under a washtub. A loaf of banana bread in my pa’s boot!

  Winters were hard, miserable when we had to move to town. To a one-room shack with a wood stove, all of us sleeping on the floor. My father worked in the train yards, when he got work. He hated it. He wasn’t a drinker, but he got mean in winter and beat all of us and my ma, just out of being worn out and cooped up, away from the river.

  None of us could ever hardly wait for spring. Every day as soon as the thaws started we’d be down checking out the locks, waiting for the filthy ice to break up and the boats to go through.

  Seems like we never actually saw the last ice melt. One day you’d wake up and you could smell it in the air. Spring.

  That first day was always the best day of the year, better than Christmas. Packing up the dory and the rowboats. Pa would be puffing on his pipe and whistling at the same time, smacking us all on the head to hurry. Ma would just load and load the boats with gear she’d had ready for weeks, singing hymns in Swedish.

  Our lighthouse stood right smack in the middle of the river. On a concrete slab over high craggy rocks. Waves crashed up over the iron door sometimes so we’d have to wait to get in. A ladder spiraled round and round, high, up to the tower where you could see the whole wide world.

  Now the lighthouse wasn’t that much bigger than the shack in town. But it was cool and windows looked out onto the water and the forests on the shore. Water and birds all around. When the logs came crashing past us you could smell the sweet sap of pine, cedar. It’s the most beautiful spot in the entire U.S. of A. What am I saying? Not now, not after the iron and copper people and Union Carbide got through with it. More and more locks, and the rapids are gone. The birds too, I expect. Heck, even the lighthouse is gone. Boats run all year long.

  We thought we were special. We were, in our lighthouse. Even things like going to the bathroom. No toilet or outhouse, just went right over the side. There was something nice about that, part of the river. That river was clean and clear, exact same color as a Coca-Cola bottle.

  Ma and Pa worked all day. He’d be checking the five lighthouses, sanding, painting, oiling gears. Ma would cook and clean away. Everybody worked, sanding, scraping barnacles, patching. Well, I didn’t work that much, never was much for work. I’d high-tail off in a skiff to the woods where I’d lie all day in the grass, under some spruce or hemlock tree. Flowers everywhere. No, sorry, I can’t remember any names of flowers. Can’t remember a damn thing anymore. Wild clematis, moon-weed, bittersweet! Ma had made me an oil-cloth sack to keep my books in. Never took it off. Even slept in it. Every Hardy Boys and western I could get my hands on. Sure! Sure you can bring me some Zane Greys! The most beautiful title ever written was Riders of the Purple Sage.

  Early evening us kids would set out in the rowboat to fire up the lamps in the smaller lighthouses, on Sugar Island, Neebish, and two other points. Ed and George and Will and me, we’d fight over who got to do it, every damn time. Ed was the oldest. He had a mean streak. He’d pull the plug in the boat and just laugh, holding it out far over the water. Rest of us would have to bail like crazy not to swamp.

  He still has a mean streak. Married to a mean old woman too. Captain of one of Ford’s river boats. George is Fire Chief of Sault Sainte Marie. Oh, you know. I mean they were. They’re all dead now. Been dead for years. I’m all that’s left. Ninety-five and can’t walk, can’t even hold up my head.

  I wish I could say I’d been a better son. I was always a dreamer. A reader and a lover. In love every year, ever since kindergarten. Swear I was just as in love with Martha Sorensen when I was five years as I was when I got grown. And women, they all fell for me. I was a good-looker. No, don’t you be kidding me, I’m just an old shell now. Steve McQueen? Yeah, that’s my style … you got that right.

  Lucille, my wife. We met in Detroit. It was love at first sight. Never was a love, a romance, like between us two. And it just kept on. She’s starting to hate me now, I can tell. No, she isn’t patient, either. I ask for orange juice and she hollers, “Wait a minute. Don’t get your shorts in a knot!” I wish I’d die today, just die, before she stops loving me.

  I was twelve when my father was killed. 1916. We were in town. Bitter, cruel winter. He was working as a brakeman for the B & O line in the middle of a blizzard. Snow and wind howling so loud he didn’t see or hear the locomotive. Ran right over him. It was terrible, terrible. You must think me a baby, bawling like this. He was a big man. Fine man.

  They took up a collection for us after the funeral. We were glad because there w
as nothing to eat. $50. You know they say, well, money went further in those days. $50. It was nothing, for eight of us. We all just wept.

  Ed and George quit school and worked on the boats. Will became a Western Union boy. My sisters did housework. I wouldn’t quit school, but delivered papers mornings and nights. Dark and cold and snow bound. I hated it.

  I admit it. I was bitter. Sorry for myself. Missed the lighthouse and just plain hated being so poor. Mostly it killed my pride to look shabby, to wear cheap shoes. Anyway when I was fifteen I ran away to Detroit. Got a dishwashing job and took up with an older woman. Gloria. A looker, with green eyes. Boy did I fall for her. She was a drinker, though. Whew, that’s another story.

  Soon as I could I became a bartender, and that’s what I did all my life. Liked it, too. No, never was a drinking man. No excuse for being so ornery.

  I only went back once. When my ma died. Thirty, forty years ago. Like to have broke my heart. They were all still mad at me, for running out on them and ma. And they were right. I had to swallow my pride and take their hatred. I deserved it. And I loved my ma. She and I were a lot alike. Daydreamers. I was ashamed I never once wrote her or went to see her before she died. Well, it was too late.

  Got me a boat and went out to the lighthouse. Came pretty close to throwing myself off, I felt so rotten. Cried all day and night. Worst night of my life.

  At night, from where we slept, as kids, we could watch the arc of the big light, intersecting with the signals from the other lighthouses. And in between there’d be stars, a million stars. All night long the boats would pass by. Whisper past like ghosts, rippling the water.

  Unmanageable

  In the deep dark night of the soul the liquor stores and bars are closed. She reached under the mattress; the pint bottle of vodka was empty. She got out of bed, stood up. She was shaking so badly that she sat down on the floor. She was hyperventilating. If she didn’t get a drink she would go into d.t.’s or have a seizure.

  Trick is to slow down your breathing and your pulse. Stay as calm as you can until you can get a bottle. Sugar. Tea with sugar, that’s what they gave you in detox. But she was shaking too hard to stand. She lay on the floor breathing deep yoga breaths. Don’t think, God don’t think about the state you’re in or you will die, of shame, a stroke. Her breath slowed down. She started to read titles of books in the bookcase. Concentrate, read them out loud. Edward Abbey, Chinua Achebe, Sherwood Anderson, Jane Austen, Paul Auster, don’t skip, slow down. By the time she had read the whole wall of books she was better. She pulled herself up. Holding on to the wall, shaking so badly she could barely move each foot, she made it to the kitchen. No vanilla. Lemon extract. It seared her throat and she retched, held her mouth shut to reswallow it. She made some tea, thick with honey, sipped it slowly in the dark. At 6, in two hours, the Uptown liquor store in Oakland would sell her some vodka. In Berkeley you had to wait until 7. Oh, god, did she have any money? She crept back to her room to check in her purse on the desk. Her son Nick must have taken her wallet and car keys. She couldn’t look for them in her sons’ room without waking them.

  There was a dollar and thirty cents in a change jar on her desk. She looked through several purses in the closet, in the coat pockets, a kitchen drawer, until she got together the four dollars that bloody wog charged for a half pint at that hour. All the sick drunks paid him. Although most of them bought sweet wine, it worked quicker.

  It was far to walk. It would take her three quarters of an hour; she would have to run home to be there before the kids woke up. Could she make it? She could hardly walk from one room to the other. Just pray a patrol car didn’t pass. She wished she had a dog to walk. I know, she laughed, I’ll ask the neighbors if I can borrow their dog. Sure. None of the neighbors spoke to her anymore.

  It kept her steady to concentrate on the cracks in the sidewalk to count them one two three. Pulling herself along on bushes, tree trunks, like climbing a mountain sideways. Crossing the streets was terrifying, they were so wide, with their lights blinking red red, yellow yellow. An occasional Examiner truck, an empty taxi. A police car going fast, without lights. They didn’t see her. Cold sweat ran down her back, her teeth chattered loudly in the still dark morning.

  She was panting and faint by the time she got to the Uptown on Shattuck. It wasn’t open yet. Seven black men, all old except for one young boy, stood outside on the curb. The Indian man sat oblivious to them inside the window, sipping coffee. On the sidewalk two men were sharing a bottle of Nyquil cough syrup. Blue death, you could buy that all night long.

  An old man they called Champ smiled at her. “Say, mama, you be sick? Your hair hurt?” She nodded. That’s how it felt, your hair, your eyeballs, your bones. “Here,” Champ said, “you better eat some of these.” He was eating saltines, passed her two. “Gotta make yourself eat.”

  “Say Champ, lemme have a few,” the young boy said.

  They let her go to the counter first. She asked for vodka and poured her pile of coins onto the counter.

  “It’s all there,” she said.

  He smiled, “Count it for me.”

  “Come on. Shit,” the boy said as she counted out the coins with violently shaking hands. She put the bottle into her purse, stumbled toward the door. Outside she held on to a telephone pole, afraid to cross the street.

  Champ was drinking from his bottle of Night Train.

  “You too much a lady to drink on the street?” She shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ll drop the bottle.”

  “Here,” he said. “Open your mouth. You need something or you’ll never get home.” He poured wine into her mouth. It coursed through her, warm. “Thank you,” she said.

  She quickly crossed the street, jogged clumsily down the streets toward her house, ninety, ninety-one, counting the cracks. It was still pitch dark when she got to her door.

  Gasping for air. Without turning on the light she poured some cranberry juice into a glass, a third of the bottle. She sat down at the table and sipped the drink slowly, the relief of the alcohol seeping throughout her body. She was crying, with relief that she had not died. She poured another third from the bottle and some juice, rested her head on the table between sips.

  When she had finished that drink she felt better, and she went into the laundry room and started a load of wash. Taking the bottle with her she went to the bathroom then. She showered and combed her hair, put on clean clothes. Ten more minutes. She checked to see if the door was locked, sat on the toilet and finished the bottle of vodka. This last drink didn’t just get her well but got her slightly drunk.

  She moved the laundry from the washer to the dryer. She was mixing orange juice from frozen concentrate when Joel came into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. “No socks, no shirt.”

  “Hi, honey. Have some cereal. Your clothes will be dry by the time you finish breakfast and shower.” She poured him some juice, another glass for Nicholas who stood silent in the doorway.

  “How in the hell did you get a drink?” He pushed past her and poured himself some cereal. Thirteen. He was taller than she.

  “Could I have my wallet and keys?” she asked.

  “You can have your wallet. I’ll give you the keys when I know you’re ok.”

  “I’m ok. I’ll be back at work tomorrow.”

  “You can’t stop anymore without a hospital, Ma.”

  “I’ll be fine. Please don’t worry. I’ll have all day to get well.” She went to check the clothes in the dryer.

  “The shirts are dry,” she told Joel. “The socks need about ten more minutes.”

  “Can’t wait. I’ll wear them wet.”

  Her sons got their books and back packs, kissed her goodbye and went out the door. She stood in the window and watched them go down the street to the bus stop. She waited until the bus picked them up and headed up Telegraph Avenue. She left then, for the liquor store on the corner. It was open now.

  Teen-Age Punk

  In the sixties, Jesse used to come over
to see Ben. They were young kids then, long hair, strobe lights, weed and acid. Jesse had already dropped out of school, already had a probation officer. The Rolling Stones came to New Mexico. The Doors. Ben and Jesse had wept when Jimi Hendrix died, when Janis Joplin died. That was another year for weather. Snow. Frozen pipes. Everybody cried that year.

  We lived in an old farmhouse, down by the river. Marty and I had just divorced, I was in my first year of teaching, my first job. The house was hard to take care of alone. Leaky roof, burnt-out pump, but it was big, a beautiful house.

  Ben and Jesse played music loud, burned violet incense that smelled of cat pee. My other sons Keith and Nathan couldn’t stand Jesse—hippie burnout—but Joel, the baby, adored him, his boots, his guitar, his pellet gun. Beer-can practice in the back yard. Ping.

  It was March and cold for sure. The next morning the cranes would be at the clear ditch at dawn. I had learned about them from the new pediatrician. He’s a good doctor, and single, but I still miss old Dr. Bass. When Ben was a baby I called him to ask how many diapers I should wash at a time. One, he told me.

  None of the kids had wanted to go. I dressed, shivering. Built a piñon fire, poured coffee into a thermos. Fixed batter for pancakes, fed the dogs and cats and Rosie the goat. Did we have a horse then? If so, I forgot to feed him. Jesse came up behind me in the dark, at the barbed wire by the frost-white road.

  “I want to see the cranes.”

  I gave him the flashlight, think I gave him the thermos too. He shined the light everywhere but the road and I kept bugging him about it. Come on. Cut it out.