by Anne Lamott
“Al!” her mother brayed. “Al! Oh, for Chrissakes, pick up.”
“Why would your mother call Al here?”
“I guess she got confused and dialed the wrong number,” said Mattie, putting ground coffee into the filter.
The second message began. “Al! For Chrissakes!” Isa shouted. “Jesus Christ on a crutch.”
The third message delivered the sounds of Isa sobbing. “Mattie! Pick up. For Chrissakes! Jesus! Why won’t anyone talk to me?”
William looked over. “Your mother seems a bit tense.”
Mattie shrugged.
“Shouldn’t you call her?”
“Oh, she’s fine,” Mattie said, a bit tense now herself.
Next up was Daniel, who’d left a message about how lonely he was feeling because Pauline was staying in the city overnight. He said he was thinking of building himself a balcony so he could throw himself off. Could she help him work on it today? Then Nicky had called to say they had forgotten Ella’s bike helmet and so he’d be over in a minute, because they were going for a bike ride in Sausalito.
“Oh, no,” Mattie groaned, feeling very rumpled and sticky and fragrant, like a bouquet of anchovies, while William ambled about in his boxers. “We’ve got to get dressed,” she said. “Nicky’s on his way over.”
Right then the doorbell rang. They walked quickly to the bedroom and put on some clothes. Mattie pulled her hair back in a rubber band, but no matter how she smoothed her face and tucked away errant hair, she looked moist and disheveled. “Just a minute!” she shouted, and William sprinted to the living room to plop down in a chair.
He picked up a copy of Harry’s Ranger Rick and thumbed through it with a look of enormous concentration. Mattie opened the door. There was Nicky, holding her marvelous daughter, who was in glasses and floral overalls. He put Ella down, and she threw her arms around her mother’s waist and pressed her face against Mattie’s crotch, sniffing like a dog.
Mattie bent to kiss Ella. She turned slowly to look at William.
“Hi, Ella,” he said. She looked back at him, puzzled, as if she could hear his voice but not see him yet. Nicky pretended not to be surprised, as William got up.
“This is William,” Mattie said. “William? This is Nick.”
William walked over as if he were about to be sworn in.
• • •
Soon they were spending every weekend together, sometimes at her house, sometimes at his. One Saturday when she was going out to visit him, Al asked over the phone if he could come along.
“Can’t I go alone?” she asked. “I’ve waited so long for a romance.”
“Nope. Mom said you have to take me with you.”
William looked wonderful that day at the café in Point Reyes where they’d arranged to meet. A white T-shirt peeked above the top button of his denim shirt. She liked the tufts of gray at his temple, his wire-rimmed glasses. She liked his shy smile.
He and Al shook hands and stepped back to size each other up, visions from the past. “You look good,” said Al. “It’s great to see you.”
“You too, Al. Can I drive?” William asked. “I want to take you the back way.”
He drove along the old two-lane between Inverness and the beach at Drakes Bay. Al rode in the back, the chaperone. As they drove along, the scent of wildflowers and cows and salt from the ocean blew in.
Al tapped William on the shoulder. “Can we go by the Cove library later on, to say hello to Noah?”
“What is it with you guys and Noah?” William asked.
“Our dads were close,” said Al defensively. “We grew up playing with Abby.”
“Your dad was close to Neil? People say Neil was Noah’s father.”
“Oh, please,” said Mattie. “That’s ridiculous. That’s like, small-town Peyton Place bullshit.”
“People in town were never entirely convinced that he died a natural death. Or even, in Neil’s case, a semi-natural death. There was some evidence that he OD’ed on medicine his doctor actually had prescribed for anxiety, to lower his blood pressure.”
William shrugged. Mattie resisted the impulse to turn and gape at Al. All of a sudden William jammed on the brakes.
“Jesus,” he said. “Did you see that?” He backed up, pulled off to the side of the road, and stopped the car, then reached for binoculars in his glove compartment. They got out and trooped to where the dirt road met the hillside, and sat down. William studied something in the hills below, a treeless green like Scotland, with a gray-flannel ocean reaching out to the horizon beyond.
When Mattie looked down, all she saw was a big pale rock. Then the rock moved. William handed her the binoculars, and through them she could see a tule elk, with broad antlers. She gasped and handed the binoculars to Al, who watched in silence. After a while, they noticed another, a rock that got to its feet, and then another, and another, and at some point they counted twelve.
They sat there immersed in the never-ending freight-train sound of waves below, and the birdsong, loud and varied as in a rainforest. Mattie looked from Al to William, savoring the moment. Elk moved slowly through the grass, and out of sight behind a hill below, making a crunching murmur as they walked away.
“I’d like to see a black bear,” Al whispered. “I’d like to see some real nature now.” Mattie laughed quietly.
“People look down and think they’re just rocks,” William said.
Al peered through the binoculars, smiling in the most menacing way. “But the crocodile spots them,” he said. Mattie cracked up.
• • •
While they drove back to Point Reyes, William told them what he knew about Noah. Abby had disappeared after her father died. Yvonne Lang took care of Noah for a while, in an old house she’d bought for very little, just past Marshall. Then he went to live with some friends in Tomales, a boy he went to school with and the kid’s parents. Abby tried to visit as much as she could, people said, but she was a mess. Maybe it was better in the long run that she was gone so much. People in the town filled in for her. Noah went to Sonoma State to study library science on a partial scholarship, the bulk of his tuition paid by private donations from people in town. Later he moved back into town, and lived in the house Yvonne had bought.
“But where did Yvonne live, then? What happened to her?”
“She had a heart attack a while ago,” William said. “I haven’t seen her in years.”
• • •
Lewis was the one who let the cat out of the bag, one night at Isa’s. “I heard you have a new man in your life,” he said.
“What!” cried Isa, sidling over. “You have a man in your life? Why don’t I know about this?”
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Lewis said, realizing his mistake.
“It’s brand-new. That’s why I haven’t told you. The only people I’ve told are Al and Daniel. I didn’t want to jinx it. Did Daniel tell you?” she asked Lewis. He nodded miserably.
Isa looked confused and scared, pretending to be happy at the news, as if Mattie had announced a frightening diagnosis with, however, the likelihood of a full recovery. “Who is it?”
“Do you remember William Allen, who I went to junior high with?”
“No, no . . . William Allen.” Isa smirked. “Not Billy Allen?”
Mattie sighed. “Yes. He used to be Billy, and now he’s William.”
“The little hoodlum in the black jeans?” Isa drew back.
“Oh, Mom. Don’t do this to me. He’s not a little guy anymore, and what if he was? And he doesn’t wear tight jeans anymore, but what if he did?”
“But his father was in the Mafia.”
“Oh, Mom,” said Al. “For Christ’s sake. His father’s a grocer.”
“He went to prison. Maybe he’s a Mafia grocer now.”
Mattie turned slowly to Al. “Can you do something with her?”
“Mom,” said Al, putting his hands on Isa’s shoulders as if to keep her from bouncing up and down. “Stop. You’ve gotten him mix
ed up with somebody else. Trust me. Ned has owned that grocery store forever.”
“Fine. Whatever you say, Mattie. Where did you meet him again? What’s it been, thirty years?”
“I ran into him at the Cove that day when we were there with you and the kids. At his dad’s superette, when I went to get sandwiches. Believe me, it does not look like a gangland operation.”
“Why didn’t you say anything at the time?”
“I don’t know,” Mattie said. “There was so much going on.”
Al drew a finger across his throat to get Mattie to stop talking.
“What do you mean, so much was going on? Waves? Waves were going on? The kids and I built a structure in the sand was going on? Hungry for lunch was going on?”
“God,” Mattie yelped. “Can you pretend to be happy about this, for a second?”
“I am happy.” Isa rolled her eyes. “Shrimpy little Billy Allen, with his Mafia father. Whoopee! Okay, I’m sorry, I’m out of line. But you have to admit, he wasn’t a particularly memorable child.”
“Mom!” Al shouted.
“He wasn’t! He was—what’s the word, Al?—sort of nondescript.”
“Well, he’s descript now,” Al replied. “He’s heavily descript.”
Isa tried to looked pleased, clasping her hands together as if in prayer, but Mattie retreated from the kitchen. She walked down the hall into her mother’s bathroom and sat on the toilet. Isa had been badgering Mattie for a year about whether she’d met anyone nice, and now she reacted like she was going out with John Gotti. Mattie dug her fingernails into her hairline, reveling in the pain.
• • •
“I’m sorry, my darling, my girl,” Isa crooned. She was standing outside the bathroom door, wringing her hands, when Mattie finally emerged. “I’m a bad person. I don’t deserve a wonderful daughter like you.” Mattie said nothing. “Everyone should have a Mattie,” Isa said. Mattie glared. Pictures of the family peered at them from both sides of the hallway, Alfred with his arms around Isa, in formal wear, in swim clothes; Alfred with his kids in his lap, with his arms around their shoulders; Alfred alone, smiling, smoking, holding a can of beer. Mattie heard the crisp rip of triangles appearing in his beer cans, up on Mount Tam, out at Neil’s, she heard him opening a can of Coke for her; she heard her mother saying her name. She desperately wanted a Coke right now, opened with a church key, opened by her father. A can or a little-bitty bottle. Everything tasted better when your father was alive.
“Let’s go back to the table,” Mattie said gently. Isa’s shoulders looked like those of a skinny child inside her bright paisley shirt. When they sat down, she reached for Mattie’s hand. At first Mattie held it too tightly, and with disgust, the way you might hold the hand of someone else’s monkey. But then she sighed, looked menacingly at her mother, raised her hand to her mouth, and kissed it.
• • •
It was all her fault when Mattie and William had their first unpleasant incident. He had called, trying to tempt her out to Olema with the promise of rock cod he’d caught off a boat at dawn that morning. She’d asked if he’d come to church with her and Daniel instead, then cook them rock cod for lunch. He seemed flustered. He wanted to meet Daniel, he said, but he really didn’t like organized religion. Mattie promised there would be nothing too organized at her church, but still he resisted. She pushed a little harder, and he gave in.
When he arrived an hour later in a suit jacket and tie, she could tell that he was miserable. There was only cool distance. She apologized at once and asked if he wanted to hang out and watch TV instead of going along, but he pretended he hadn’t heard her.
“It doesn’t make sense for you to come if you’ll be unhappy,” she said.
“I already told you I didn’t want to go, Mattie. Several times, in fact. But you insisted. So here I am, okay?”
Daniel was waiting for them on his porch. They walked up to meet him. He had beaded tubes on some of his dreadlocks now. He smiled rather shyly at William. They shook hands warmly, like people who had already spoken a number of times by phone. There were circles under Daniel’s eyes, and when the phone inside rang, he excused himself and raced in.
“Hello?” they heard him say. “When are you coming home? Why are you still there?” He listened for a moment. Then he protested. “I’m going to church. I’ll be home about one. . . . Of course with Mattie. Mattie and her new boyfriend. William . . . Yes, he’s right here. I’m looking at him!” He listened. “All right. See you then.”
Daniel returned to the porch, and the three walked to William’s car.
“I wish you were meeting me on a better day,” Daniel said. “I hardly got any sleep last night. I can’t sleep alone anymore.”
He and William sat in front, talking easily. They seemed to like each other right off. They stopped to pick up Lewis, who was waiting outside, holding on to his walker. Daniel got out to help Lewis fold up the contraption. William caught Mattie’s eye in the rearview mirror. He looked utterly flat to her, like a corpse who had died with a resentment.
Old Mrs. Berry with her fierce walnut face and flowered hat greeted them in the narthex and handed them each a bulletin. Mattie felt proud to introduce her to the handsome man on her arm. Mattie, Daniel, and Lewis waved hellos to various members of the congregation as they walked to seats near the choir. Mattie sat between William and Lewis, with Daniel on the other side of Lewis. William stared ahead. Daniel rubbed his eyes. Lewis scanned the water-stained acoustical tiles, smiling as if Jesus were up there waving to him. Mattie reached for William’s hand and he held hers for a minute or so. She felt furious with herself. Why had she forced him to come when he hadn’t wanted to? But there was nothing she could do now. Buoy me up out of the fear, she prayed, and held her breath and felt as though she were in a big nickelodeon and if she could just pick the right tune, William and Daniel would begin to sway and swing, and everyone would be in harmony.
Mattie sat waiting for God to show her what to do. She turned to Lewis. His eyes were closed in prayer, so she closed hers too, and prayed out loud, softly, “Help me, help me.” Lewis reached for her hand. “Don’t let the devil steal your joy,” he whispered. “Keep looking up.”
She glanced at William, who looked as if he were being made to listen to a sermon in Latvian, and then at Daniel, who seemed barely awake, and she felt like someone had plugged her oxygen tube back in. From time to time William would make a sudden expansive gesture while whispering to Daniel, and maybe she was paranoid but it seemed a way of getting back at her, to show that he could be nice to people—just not to her. She didn’t care so much anymore. The men seemed far away: she could have been watching them through the porthole of a quiet spaceship. Lewis was looking up, so she looked up too, over the heads of the choir members, nearly to the ceiling, where the notes hung above the singers like moths.
• • •
She had the family, including Lewis, over at the end of May for a garden party. “Casual, Mom, okay? Low-key. Quiche and salad.” The week leading up to it was calm and pleasant. William was fun to be with, and even though the sex between them was not fantastic, sleeping with him, waking with him, felt terrific. No longer being even vaguely tempted to sleep with Nicky was even better.
She met William in Olema a couple of times, and he took her to places he loved—the Bear Valley Trail in Point Reyes for a hike, the Station House Cafe for popovers. Finally the day of the party came.
Mattie and Daniel had taken Lewis to church that morning. It was a warm, clear day, and the service was wonderful. The pastor told a story about a woman who asked her minister whether everyone she loved would be in heaven.
“What will make it heaven,” said the minister, “is that you’ll love everyone who is there.”
The wisteria had gone nuts, as it always did in late springtime. In March it had looked gritchy and twiggy and crucified, disturbing the symmetry of the fence, and then it exploded into Oriental craziness, like a garish beaded cur
tain. The yard would have been a perfect setting for a garden party if it had not begun to drizzle.
So they moved the party indoors. She and William had a glass of wine before everyone arrived. Nicky had promised to return the children at four, before the party began, so they had the house to themselves. She did not want him to show up after the party started, because Isa could be counted on to be unpleasant. Nicky wasn’t the point anymore. She’d asked Al and Katherine to pick up Isa and Lewis at four-thirty.
She and William made soup, tomato and mozzarella salad, and bread with the bread machine. Mozart played softly in the background on a boom box. By four-thirty, Nicky had still not come by. When Mattie called, her anxiety mounting, he answered the phone with great irritation in his voice. He and Lee were having a fight, and Alexander was screaming. Was there any way she could come get the children?
“No,” she snapped. “I have people arriving. God damn it, Nicky. You promised.” You said, she heard herself whine.
“Fine,” he said, and hung up. Everybody at the party seemed to share his fine mood. Al’s face had the cold, stiff look of someone who had been out on the bay too long. Isa came in on Lewis’s arm. They had both dressed for a funeral. Lewis wore his black suit, and looked like her personal mortician. Isa had gone for broke, in a dark gray dress suit, dark gray heels, dark gray hat. It was definitely not a garden party outfit. It was rhino wear; JCPenney’s Charging Rhino line.
But Isa suddenly called out, “Mattie!” so full of endearment that they might have been meeting at an airport in a distant city, and she waved. William and Daniel got to their feet.
Mattie took Isa’s arm. “Mom?” she said. “This is William. William, this is my mother, Isa.” They shook hands.
“I hardly recognize you,” said Isa. “You’ve gotten so tall.”
“Isa, you haven’t aged at all,” William replied smoothly. “It’s good to see you again.”
Everything about him obviously pleased Isa, because she grew girlish, giddy, and animated. Mattie watched from the controls of her spaceship, studied her mother’s face, overly made-up, paler than Mattie had ever seen, ghostly, with gashes of blusher on her cheeks, eyeliner around her eyes, brows scrawled on.