"Don't you have the periodic table?" Angel asks, her hand on Roberta's arm.
"You mean that chart thing?" Roberta is kidding. They both laugh quietly. "I have it, but I need to find and understand it."
"It's a date, then," Angel says.
The following evenings are difficult for Roberta. On a couple of them, she's at my place. She cries, and spends hours on the phone. She's back to smoking, which she'd quit a couple of years before I met her. I listen while she talks to friends, sitting at my kitchen table with the lights out and the long white cord of the phone stretched from the far wall. She occupies herself this way while I'm working in the darkroom just a few feet away.
The night after the funeral she calls Howard. "Hey, Howard," she says. "It's Roberta. You okay?"
"I know," she says.
The pictures I'm working with were taken from about two thousand feet. This particular work is for a developer who wants to tuck a mall into a hillside.
"Well, is the family gone?—not yet?" Roberta is asking Howard.
"Look, I didn't call to ask what I can do. Are you relieved and refreshed by that?" She laughs, all indications being that this struck a chord with Howard. "I'm gonna tell you what I'm going to do—little change of pace, right."
"Right," she says, levity subsiding. "I know, Howard.
The pictures I'm developing show highways and neighborhoods, the roofs of used-car places, an occasional line of traffic at a light. Even at so low an altitude, over a dense population, I don't see anything readily identifiable as a person except for maybe those small specks dotting the edge of a backyard pool. Staring down through the camera sometimes I imagine that I'm looking instead through a microscope, into a petri dish. There's a rough eruption of green mold in the corner, microscopic cauliflower—wait, it's a forest. At 2,500 feet, a cemetery is easy to identify, the stones in rank and file, an occasional canopy, an occasional burst of color from flowers. But you don't see many people. People from above are about the size of their hats.
"Look here," she says to Howard, taking a deep breath. "I'm carting in food tomorrow. Might last you a couple of days if you ration it."
I peer through the curtain, reminding her of the other offer.
"Oh yeah, and my friend Daniel—you've not met him yet. He's a professional photographer. If you find a picture, Howard—of Michelle, you know?—get it to me and we'll make it big and pretty, for posterity. That little girl of yours, someday she'll . . ." There's no way Roberta will make it through this sentence.
I look back out at her.
"I gotta go, Howard—right—I love you, too. Hang in there. Have your mom be sure to throw the door open wide around noon tomorrow. I'll be on the run."
"Okay," she says then, after a moment, and clicks off. She puts her head down on her arms on the table.
A few years ago I was doing a job for a surveyor. This was back in Illinois, and actually, completely without knowing it at the time, I recorded a stop-action sequence of an auto accident. It was all silently unfolding down there, inside the view of my camera, and I didn't notice. I was looking at something else, trying to fly at the same time as usual.
I noticed it in the darkroom while I was bringing the pictures up a few days later. I went through my pile of the week's newspapers trying to find out if anyone was hurt. Didn't find anything. I guess I could have asked the police.
A week after the funeral we're driving up Angel's long driveway in Calistoga. Being out in the car with Roberta makes me feel wonderful and guilty, like stolen moments. I have to keep reminding myself that my divorce is final. The change in my life is dizzying.
Angel, dressed in sandals with a little lift to them, a dazzling white, frilly blouse, and Levi's, is all the way at the back and waving us to drive around. The driveway comes around the house and blends into a large patio and garden. Angel's still holding the hose—she's been watering a terrace of flowers. Twisting the nozzle, she stops the water, drops the hose in the grass.
"You came!" she says when we stop, and her arms engulf Roberta as she gets out of the car. "I didn't think you'd come even when you called and said you were on the way."
"Why's that?" Roberta asks.
"Hello, Daniel," Angel says over Roberta's shoulder, over the top of the car. "Good to see you again."
She orients us, points in the direction of the Palisades to the east, then toward the Mayacamas, the direction of Santa Rosa, Bodega Bay. She takes us back to an area around the pool. She pours us a glass of wine. Roberta and I sit on wrought-iron patio chairs in the shade of a white canvas umbrella, and Angel is partly in the sun in an ancient, weathered rocking chair. Her black hair has silver in it. She has it gathered up in back.
"Do you know Napa wines, Daniel?" she asks. "This is a local chardonnay—you won't find better in California."
She must think I'm from North Dakota or something. I listen and smile. I like her is why.
"It's aged in oak casks. Like the reds. Tastes grassy; don't you think?"
"Dan's been up and down the valley in his time," Roberta says protectively. "He lives in San Jose."
"Ah, San Jose," Angel says.
"He used to live way farther north. When he was married. And Chicago."
"Are you divorced, then?" she asks me, the usual measured caution in her voice showing she's allowing for the chance that, like Howard, I might be a widower, best case.
"Freshly."
"Well. Welcome to the world. Don't become too discouraged for a while. It's an adjustment."
"Okay," I say to her.
"Then later let the discouragement get down inside of you and eat you in half like it does the rest of us," she says, laughing bitterly. She clears herself of whatever she means by that and says, "Well, then, how did you two meet?"
"Daniel likes photography," Roberta says.
"I'm an aerial photographer," I tell her.
"I have this vision of a man snapping photos from a high wire." Angel laughs.
"Not high enough," I say.
"No, but I'm getting there," Angel says, laughing her eyes bright.
"I mean, I have an airplane," I say.
She's already toasting us, her tough-woman laugh easing back into a warm smile. "To my friends . . ." Her bracelets slip to her elbow. "I'm glad you came. I hated that terrible visitation, didn't you?" She catches my eyes as well as Roberta's over the rim of her glass as she sips. Her mascara is very heavy on top, making her eyelashes essentially one thing. I can't get over the evenness of her beauty.
We're quiet for a moment. "You know, I've heard Howard is taking leave from work and trying to do the baby thing himself." She shakes her head, looks off toward the garden. Suddenly she's battling a wave of emotion. "You just don't imagine people like Michelle . . . this kind of thing happening to . . . not Michelle."
"I know. Not Michelle," Roberta says.
"Did you have children?" Angel asks me. "But of course it's different with men," she says before I can answer.
"I thought we were talking about a man—Howard," I say. "Yes, I have a daughter." But even as I say it I know she won't appreciate my daughter—my daughter won't be real to Angel today. I have a flash, then, of the comfort I used to feel just before falling asleep, knowing my little girl was happy and warm in deep sleep just a few steps away in another room. "My daughter's in Chicago with her mom," I say, to round out the detail, but Angel has moved on.
I watch her lips move, but I don't follow her drift. Since I left home the year before, this is the kind of people I've met continually. Well-groomed singles, making conversation, living in nice houses, surrounded by nice things they got the ideas for from each other or in magazines. Roberta is one, although she doesn't have a house but instead lives in a town house among many single nurses a block from the Davis Community Hospital.
Angel says to Roberta, "Donna came by, and Jackie, last week. She really likes you—Jackie does. Really. I mentioned you might visit me soon. She says you're pretty and bright. No
argument there. Right, Daniel?"
"Right," I say automatically, and lift the glass as a small toast to Roberta.
"Jackie thinks Albert . . . do you know these people, Daniel?"
I nod and offer that I sort of know Albert.
Angel continues right over that. "She thinks Albert is still yours, Roberta. Yours for the taking."
"Did she say that?"
"Maybe she was just being charming."
"Well. Albert's anybody's for the taking," Roberta says.
"Albert and Roberta dated there for a while, Daniel—hardly a matched set, would you say?"
"Hardly."
Roberta has reached over and put her hand on mine on the table.
Then they talk about this person named Donna I've never heard of before, well into the second glass of wine. Donna has taken charge of her life, Angel says. She's not seeing men, and she's completely off pills. She is going to a female counselor in Davis and they seem really to have hit it off. Roberta and Angel talk about the celibacy article in Cosmopolitan.
I watch Angel. She's engrossed in Roberta. She brings us both along with her laugh, and once in a while there is a polite glance to me—to keep me included, but this visit is about Roberta. I'm very comfortable with that.
When we go in, I take the Chardonnay and Angel takes Roberta's arm. Together they walk ahead of me. They talk so quietly I can't hear. I flatter myself that they may be talking about me, or at least about men. I think I know better, however. In the house, made mostly of stone and glass, Angel shows us around. She lives alone.
In the kitchen, on the counter, is a textbook. From the front flap Angel pulls out a poster-sized periodic table. "For you," she says to Roberta, and Roberta laughs. "The text is old, so you're missing the eight or nine new elements. Maybe it's a collector's item by now, like a flag with twenty-one stars or something. Post it over the bathroom sink," she says. "You'll have it in no time."
Roberta plays the piano for Angel, who sits next to her reading the music. The room, the whole afternoon, fills with the sound of the piano. Roberta has some boiler-plate sections of classics memorized, including some of Rachmaninoff's second concerto, which I love, and Debussy's "Arabesque," and Angel has a lot of music. I find myself wanting to hear things all the way through, but each piece seems to go a while and then play out. They talk quietly, and sometimes rousing laughter comes across to me. For the most part, I can't hear them. Angel plays then, and she is very good, too. They land in a clump of show tunes, and Roberta sings in that hefty Karen Carpenter style of hers.
I've been in this situation before in my life, it occurs to me. Sometime. My wife and I had gone somewhere, perhaps to the home of a friend of hers from college. The kids would play outside, and I would find a good chair with a view. Maybe if they had a good bookshelf I'd pull some book down and page through it. And there would be music.
Through the glass wall from where I'm sitting I can see into the far reaches of the yard, well groomed and empty. And I can see the trees and flowers in a rock garden area next to a pond, moving in the warm, gentle wind. I possess the bottle of wine, and in time give myself over to it.
"What is it about Angel?"
Roberta is in bed, stretched out under white sheets. It's several nights later. "I don't know," she says. "Like what?"
I'm in the bathroom staring in the mirror. It's my apartment. Roberta makes me feel old. I try to imagine why she wants to be with me. She didn't know me when I was younger and had more hair and didn't have the beginnings of a paunch.
"She's been single a long time," Roberta offers. "I think she's had it with men, is why she may have seemed a little tough."
"Not at all."
"I asked her if she was going out. She said she'd been dating a Ph.D. named Brad off and on for about a year but it ended. Said he was fine, a real high-energy guy, as they say, and they had fun and all that—he was making big dollars somewhere and they traveled a little. Then suddenly he seemed to sort of lose it, got all soft in the neck, and shortly after that asked her to marry him."
In the mirror I examine my neck.
"Plus, you know. She's teaching, and college is a hard nut to crack when you're . . . whatever they call it."
"A woman?"
"No!" She laughs. "Adjunct."
"Ah. Adjunct."
I hear nothing from Roberta for a few seconds. Then she says, "What are you doing in there?"
"Do you have any pictures of Michelle yet?" I say. Inside, I'm thinking of death, my own, alone out here in an apartment with a shopping center across the street. I think of Michelle rocking in the carpeted dark of her casket when it's bumped. I'm wondering if a woman exists whom I might lose control of myself with and fall in love again. I'm wondering if maybe I haven't drifted too far from church. I'm thinking I should call home.
"She was a pretty girl. What are you doing in there?" Roberta sounds half irritated, half bored. Muttering, she gets up. It's almost dawn. She, dances into a robe of mine, steps into my mirror. "What're you doing?" she asks me.
"Thinking."
"About what?"
I try to give it words. "I just try to imagine how Michelle's husband must feel, knowing she's buried in the ground."
"What does he care about that? His wife is dead. That's the sad thing."
I stare at the mirror. What a composition, the two of us there before me. Who is this girl? Is she an actress portraying my dream girl, portraying my wife? It's like I'm waking up in a strange place after amnesia.
"Did you know I played baseball in college?" I ask her. Her eyes go down. "Did you know I used to work for the paper in New Haven, Connecticut?"
"C'mon," she says. "What's the deal?"
"Did you know I walked Wisconsin for Eugene McCarthy?"
She shakes her head, smiling. "Gosh. You're pretty old." She tickles me in the side, trying to bring me along.
"It's gone if you don't know about it."
"Are you going to start pumping me full of the sixties stuff again? I tell you, it isn't healthy to think your era—or whatever—is the center of the world. Plus, to people like me, it's boring."
"I know."
"You miss your family?" she asks me. That's something that has always amazed me about her. Roberta listens very well. "I understand that," she says. Her arm is around me, hand resting in the small of my back, so comfortable.
"Tell me something," I say. "Did Michelle go to church or anything?"
"Unitarian or . . . one of those. Why?"
"I just . . . I wonder what she thought would become of herself when she died." Hearing myself say this drives me into retreat. "I don't know. I can't get it out of my mind how those little kids actually bumped the box."
"Daniel, the casket didn't move. It wasn't going to fall. Haven't you ever been a pallbearer? Those things are heavy. And anyway, don't make Michelle's tragedy yours. Let her have it. Feel sorry for her."
"I do. But I didn't know Michelle," I say. "For me, she's death generally, the physical aspect. She's pushing up general daisies. It's the general effect."
"Poor Dan." She tries to bring her arm up to my neck, but I'm heading for the other room.
"Poor Daniel what?" I say, sitting down on the bed to pull on my pants. "I'm going to call Dubie—remember him?" Roberta is right there, pushes me back—I'm tangled up in my jeans.
"Those people that dropped in for breakfast when I first knew you?"
"Right. Dubie and I go way back," I say.
"Why don't you just call home? I've got a great idea. Fly your little girl in and we'll take her for a glider ride in the Valley."
My boots are on the floor under my feet. I'm looking up, the frizzy cascade of Roberta's hair in my face. She's smiling down. "You're a good boy, Dan,” she says to me. "I want you to be happy. In the meantime,” she says, a smile at once shy and mischievous, "here's the physical aspect,” she says, flirting with the movement of her hips against me. "Here's your general effect,” she says. She kisses me next
to the eyes, holds me still.
"Hello." It's a couple of nights later. I'm in the apartment alone. I decide to call.
"Hi, Dubie. It's Dan."
"Daniel! You okay?"
"I'm doing great."
"It's the middle of the night."
"You notice everything."
"Are you sure you're okay?"
"Yeah." I hear him struggling to sit up in bed. Dubie's a pilot for United Airlines, still lives in Chicago.
"Hey," I say. "Let's catch the Giants one of these days."
"Okay." This sounds uncertain, like he at least suspects this is not the reason for a call in the middle of the night.
"I miss your brand of BS. It's been too long. Plus, the Giants are having a good year."
"Seriously, I'm up for it. I've been wondering about you. Haven't been to the ball park since the last time we went, you and me. I stopped watching them after they traded Clark to St. Louis."
For a few moments I can't think of anything to say.
"I've been wondering how you're doing,” he says.
"So how's work?" I ask him.
"Great. I'm in deep shit with some old friends because I crossed the picket line this spring."
"You did?"
"When push came to shove, thirty years with the company just outweighed the union dispute. It wasn't even a hard decision, Dan."
"Sounds okay by me," I say. "But, speaking of deep shit, you're in a little with me."
"I know—don't say it."
"You're a shitty correspondent."
"Ah, I know it. I sure am sorry, Dan . . . I swear, I . . ." He stops himself. He knows there's no excuse. Dubie flies to the coast a lot, and calls while he's here, and used to, after the divorce, at least drop me a card from time to time. He says, "Not everybody can hammer out four-page letters triweekly. Takes me longer to read your letters than it takes you to write 'em. I couldn't keep up."
I hear something in the background, a woman's voice. "You got somebody with you?"
"My wife, you madman."
"Of course. Sorry."
"Everybody gets divorced, thinks everybody else is." He tells her it's me on the phone. "You dating, Dan? Elaine wants to know."
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