by Lucia Berlin
I’m seeing more of Bob Dash. He’s like having a personal seminar. Today we went to coffee and talked about Nausea. But I’m thinking more about Joe. I see him between classes and when I’m working. He and Jonesy and I laugh a lot, eat pizza and drink beer. Joe has a little room that’s sort of his office, that’s where we kiss. I don’t think about him exactly, but about kissing him. I was thinking about it in Copy Editing 1, and even groaned or said something out loud and the professor looked at me and said “Yes, Miss Gray?”
Dear Conchi,
… I’m reading Jane Austen. Her writing is like chamber music, but it’s real and funny at the same time. There are a thousand books I want to read, don’t know where to start. I’m changing my major to English next semester…
Dear Conchi,
An old couple work as janitors in the journalism building. One night they took us up on the roof for a beer after work. The roof is overhung with cottonwood trees and you can just sit under the trees and look at the stars. If you want you can look over and watch the cars on Route 66, or on the other side, into the windows of the dorm where I live. They gave us an extra key to the broom closet, where the ladder to the roof is. Nobody else knows about this place. We go up there between classes and after work. Joe brought a grill and a mattress and candles. It’s like our own island or tree house …
Dear Conchi,
I am happy. When I wake up in the morning my face is sore from smiling.
When I was little I think I felt peace sometimes, in the woods or a meadow, and in Chile I was always having fun. I felt joy when I skied. But I had never felt happiness like I do with Joe. Never felt that I was me, and loved for that.
I sign out for the weekends to his house, with his father responsible for me. Joe lives with his father, who is very old, a retired school teacher. He loves to cook, makes awful greasy food. He drinks beer all day. The only effect it seems to have is to make him sing things like “Minnie the Mermaid” and “Rain on the Roof,” over and over while he cooks. He tells stories too, about everybody in Armijo, the neighborhood. He had most of them in school.
Dear Conchi,
Most weekends we go to the Jemez mountains and climb all day, camp out at night. There are some hot springs up there. So far nobody has been there when we have. Deer and owls, big-horned sheep, blue jays. We lie in the water, talk or read out loud. Joe loves to read Keats.
My classes and job are going fine, but I always can’t wait until they are over so I can be with Joe. He’s a sports reporter for the Tribune, too, so it’s hard to find time. We go to track meets and high school basketball games, stock car races. I don’t like football, miss soccer and rugby games.
Dear Conchi,
Everyone is unreasonably upset about me and Joe. The house-mother gave me a talk. Bob Dash was horrid, lectured me for about an hour, until I got up and left. Said Joe was vulgar and common, a hedonist with no sense of values and no intellectual scope. Among other things. Mostly people are worried because I’m so young. They think I’m going to throw away my education or career. Or that’s what they all say. I think they are jealous because we are so in love. And no matter what their arguments, from ruining my reputation to risking my future, they always bring up the fact that he is Mexican. It never occurs to anybody that coming from Chile I would naturally like a latin person, someone who feels things. I don’t fit in here at all. I wish Joe and I could go home to Santiago …
Dear Conchi,
… Someone actually wrote to my parents, told them I was having an affair with a man much too old for me. They called, hysterical, are coming all the way from Chile. They will arrive on New Year’s Eve. Apparently my mother started drinking again. My father says it’s all my fault.
When I’m with Joe none of this matters. I think he is a reporter because he likes to talk to people. Wherever we go we end up talking to strangers. And liking them.
I don’t think I ever really liked the world until I met him. My parents don’t like the world, or me, or they would trust me.
Dear Conchi,
They arrived on New Year’s Eve, but were exhausted from the trip so we only talked for a little while. They didn’t hear that I’m making straight A’s, that I love my job, that I was chosen queen of the Newsprint Ball that night. I have become a fallen woman, a common tart, etc. “With a greaser,” my mother said.
The dance was wonderful. We had dinner with friends from the department before the dance, laughed a lot. There was a ceremony where I got a newspaper crown and an orchid. For some reason I had never danced with Joe before. It was wonderful. Dancing with him.
We had agreed to see my parents the next day, at their motel. My father said he and Joe could watch the Rose Bowl game, that it would break the ice.
I am so dumb. I saw that they had been drinking martinis already, felt they would be more relaxed. Joe was great. At ease, warm, open. They were like stone.
Daddy relaxed a little when the game came on, both he and Joe enjoyed it. Mama and I sat there silent. Joe just drinks beer, so he really loosened up on my father’s martinis. Every time there was a field goal he’d holler “Fuckin’ A!” or “A la verga!” A few times he punched Daddy on the shoulder. Mama cringed and drank and didn’t say a word.
After the game Joe invited my parents out to dinner, but my father said that he and Joe should go get some Chinese food.
While they were gone Mama talked about the shame I had caused them by being immoral, how disgusted she was.
Conchi, I know we promised to tell the other about sex, the first time either of us made love. It’s hard to write about. What is fine about it is that it is between two people, the most naked and close you can get. And each time is different and a surprise. Sometimes we laugh the whole time. Sometimes it makes you cry.
Sex is the most important thing that ever happened to me. I could not understand what my mother was saying, that I was filthy.
Lord knows what Joe and Daddy talked about. They were both pale when they got back. Apparently my father said things like “statutory rape” and Joe said he would marry me tomorrow, which was the worst thing, for my parents, that he could have said.
After we had eaten Joe said, “Well, we’re all pretty tired. I better be going. You coming, Lu?”
“No, She’s staying here,” my father said.
I stood there, frozen.
“I’m going with Joe,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
I’m writing you now from the dorm. It’s eerily quiet. Most of the girls went home for Christmas.
Except for briefly telling me what my father said, Joe didn’t talk while he drove me home. I couldn’t talk either. When we kissed goodbye I thought my heart would break.
Dear Conchi,
My parents are taking me out of school at the end of the semester. They’ll wait for me in New York. I’m to go there and then we’re going to Europe until the fall semester.
I took a taxi to Joe’s house. We were going to Sandia Peak to talk, got into the car. I don’t know what I thought he would say, what I wanted.
I hoped he’d say he’d wait for me, that he’d still be here when I got back. But he said that if I really loved him I’d marry him right now. I reacted to that. He needs to graduate; he only works part-time. I didn’t say more of the truth which is that I don’t want to leave school. I want to study Shakespeare, the Romantic poets. He said we could live with his dad until we had enough money. We were crossing the bridge over the Rio Grande when I said I didn’t want to get married yet.
“You won’t know for a long time what it is you’re throwing away.”
I said I knew what we had, that it would still be there when I got back.
“It will, but you won’t. No, you’ll go on, have ‘relationships,’ marry some asshole.”
He opened the car door, shoved me out onto the Rio Grande bridge, the car still moving. He drove away. I walked all the way across town to the dorm. I kept thinking he’d pull up behind me, but he n
ever did.
Our Brother’s Keeper
When some people die they just vanish, like pebbles into a pool. Everyday life just smooths back together and goes on as it did before. Other people die but stay around for a long time, either because they have captured the public’s imagination, like James Dean, or because their spirit just won’t let go, like our friend Sara’s.
Sara died ten years ago, but still, anytime her grandchildren say something bright or imperious, everyone will say, “She’s just like Sara!” Whenever I see two women driving along and laughing together, really laughing, I always think it’s Sara. And of course each spring when I plant I remember the fig tree we got in the garbage bin at PayLess, the bad fight we had over the miniature coral rose bush at East Bay.
Our country has just gone to war, which is why I’m thinking about her now. She could get madder at our politicians, and be more vocal about it, than anybody I know. I want to call her up; she always gave you something to do, made you feel you could do something.
Even though all of us continue to reminisce about her, we stopped talking about the way she died very soon after it happened. She was murdered, brutally, her head bashed in with a “blunt instrument.” A lover she had been going with had repeatedly threatened to kill her. She had called the police each time but they said there was nothing they could do. The man was a dentist, an alcoholic, some fifteen years younger than she was. In spite of the threats, and of other times that he had hit her, no weapon was found, no evidence placed him at the scene of the crime. He was never charged.
You know how it is when a friend is in love. Well, I guess I’m talking to women, strong women, older women. (Sara was 60.) We say it’s great being our own person, that our lives are full. But we still want it, recognize it. Romance. When Sara spun around my kitchen laughing, “I’m in love. Can you believe it?” I was glad for her. We all were. Leon was attractive. Well-educated, sexy, articulate. He made her happy. Later, as she did, we forgave him. Missed appointments, unkind words, thoughtlessness, a slap. We wanted everything to be OK. We all still wanted to believe in love.
After Sara’s death her son Eddie moved into her house. I cleaned his house every Tuesday, so it turned out I was cleaning at Sara’s. It was hard, at first, to be in her sunny kitchen with all the plants gone but the memories still there. Gossip, talks about God, our children. The living room was full of Eddie’s CDs, radios and computers, two TVs, three telephones. (So much electronic equipment that once when the phone rang I answered it with the TV remote control.) His junky mismatched furniture replaced the huge linen couch where Sara and I would lie facing each other, covered with a quilt, talking, talking. Once one rainy Sunday we were both so low we watched bowling and Lassie.
The first time I cleaned the bedroom was terrible. The wall near where her bed used to be was still splattered and caked with her blood. I was sickened. After I cleaned it I went outside into the garden. I smiled to see the azaleas and daffodils and ranunculus we had planted together. We didn’t know which end of the ranunculus to plant, so we decided to put in half of them with the point facing down and the other half with the point up. So we still don’t know which are the ones that grew.
I went back in to vacuum and make the bed, saw that under Eddie’s bed was a revolver and a shotgun. I froze. What if Leon came back? He was crazy. He could kill me too. I took out each of the guns. Hands trembling, I tried to figure out what you did with them. I wanted Leon to come, so I could blow him away.
I vacuumed under the bed and put the weapons back. I was disgusted by my feelings and tried hard to think about something else.
I pretended that I was a TV show. A cleaning lady detective, sort of a female Columbo. Half-witted, gum chewing … but while she’s feather dusting she’s really looking for clues. She always just happens to be cleaning houses where a murder happens. Invisible, she mops the kitchen floor while suspects say incriminating things on the phone a few feet away. She eavesdrops, finds bloody knives in the linen cupboard, is careful not to dust the poker, saving prints …
Leon probably killed her with a golf club. That’s how they met, at the Claremont Golf Club. I was scrubbing the bathtub when I heard the creak of the garden gate, a chair scraping on the wooden deck. Someone was in the back yard. Leon! My heart pounded. I couldn’t see through the stained glass window. I crawled into the bedroom and grabbed the revolver, crawled to the french doors that led to the garden. I peeked out, gun ready, although my hand was shaking so bad I couldn’t have shot it.
It was Alexander. Christ. Old Alexander, sitting in an Adirondack chair. Hi, Al! I called out, and went to put the gun away.
He was holding a clay pot of pink freesia that he kept meaning to bring to Sara. He had just felt like coming over to sit in her garden. I went in and poured him a cup of coffee. Sara had coffee going day and night. And good things to eat. Soups or gumbos, good bread and cheese and pastries. Not like the Winchell’s donuts and frozen macaroni dinners Eddie kept around.
Alexander was an English professor. He could drone on for hours, Gerard Manley Hopkins gashing gold vermilion. He and Sara had known each other for forty years, had been young idealistic socialists way back when. He had always been in love with her, would plead with her to marry him. Lorena and I used to beg her to do it. “Come on, Sara… let him take care of you.” He was good. Noble and dependable. But, if a woman says a man is nice it usually means she finds him boring. And, like my mother used to say, “Ever tried being married to a saint?”
And that’s just what Alexander was talking about …
“I was too boring for her, too predictable. I knew this chap was bad news. I only hoped that I would be around when he left, to help pick up the pieces.”
Tears came into his eyes then. “I feel responsible for her death. I knew he had hurt her, would hurt her. I should have interfered some way. All I cared about was my own resentment and jealousy. I am guilty.”
I held his hand and tried to cheer him up, and we talked for a while, remembering Sara.
After he had gone I went in to clean the kitchen. Hey, what if Alexander really was guilty? What if he had come over that night, with the pot of freesia, or to see if she wanted to play Scrabble? Maybe he had looked through the curtains on the french doors, seen Sara and Leon making love. He had waited until after Leon left, out the front door, and had gone in, wild with jealousy, and killed her. He was a suspect, for sure.
The next Tuesday the house wasn’t as messy as usual so I spent the last hour weeding and replanting in the garden. I was in the potting shed when I heard the bells and tambourine. Hare Hare Hare. Sara’s youngest daughter, Rebecca, was dancing and chanting around the swimming pool.
Sara had been upset at first, when she had become a Krishna, but one day we were driving down Telegraph and saw her among a group of them. She looked so beautiful, singing, bobbing around, in her saffron robes. Sara pulled the car over to the curb, just to sit and watch her. She lit a cigarette and smiled. “You know what? She’s safe.”
I tried to talk to Rebecca, get her to sit down and have some herbal tea or something, but she was spinning, spinning like a dervish, moaning away. Then she was jumping and twirling on the diving board, interrupting her chants with violent outbursts. “Evil begets evil!” She raved on about her mother’s smoking and coffee drinking, about her eating red meat, and cheese with retin or something in it. And fornication. She was at the very tip of the diving board now, and every time she hollered “Fornication!” she’d bounce about three feet up into the air.
Suspect number two.
I only cleaned Eddie’s once a week, but invariably at least one person came into the back yard. I’m sure people came in every other day as well. Because that’s how she was, Sara, her heart and doors open to everyone. She helped in big ways, politically, in the community, but in little ways too, anyone who needed her. She always answered her phone, she never locked her doors. She had always been there for me.
One Tuesday, out of t
he blue, the biggest, worst suspect of all showed up in the back yard. Clarissa. Eddie’s ex-girlfriend. Wow. I don’t think she had ever been near Sara’s house before, she hated her so much. She had tried to get Eddie to leave his mother’s law firm, come live with her in Mendocino and be a full-time writer. She wrote letters to Sara, accusing her of being domineering and possessive, and fought with Eddie all the time about his law career and his mother. Clarissa and I had been friends until finally it came down to choosing between the two women. But not before I heard her say a hundred times, “Oh, how I’d love to murder Sara.” And there she was, standing under the lavender wisteria that covered the gate, chewing on the stem of her dark glasses.
“Hi, Clarissa,” I said.
She was startled. “Hi. I didn’t expect to see anyone. What are you doing here?” (Typical of her…when in doubt, attack.)
“I’m cleaning Eddie’s house.”
“Are you still cleaning houses? That’s sick.”
“I sure hope you don’t talk to your patients like that.”
(Clarissa’s a psychiatrist, for Lord’s sake …) I tried hard to think of what questions my cleaning lady detective would ask her. I was at a loss, she was too intimidating. She really was capable de tout. How could I prove it, though?
“Where were you the night Sara was killed?” I blurted.
Clarissa laughed. “My dear…are you implying that I am guilty of the crime? No. Too late,” she said as she turned and walked out of the gate.
As the weeks went by my list of suspects continued to grow, everyone from judges to policemen to window washers.
The only thing about the window washer was the weapon, the pole he carries around with him, along with his bucket. It was scary, seeing his silhouette through the curtains. A big man, carrying a pole. I had wondered about him for years. He is a homeless young black man who sleeps at night on Oakland busses and sometimes in the lobby of Alta Bates Emergency. During the day he goes from door to door asking people if they want their windows washed. He always has a book with him. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Jim Thompson. Karl Marx. He has a nice voice and dresses very well, tennis sweaters, Ralph Lauren Tshirts.