by Anne Lamott
• • •
On her way home that night Mattie drove to Bolinas Beach. She wanted to see the sand where her father had been sitting in the photograph. She did not really forgive him much, yet. The sun was setting golden-red, and the driftwood beach musicians had survived the storms of winter, all still in place with their instruments, bleached and raggedy but ready to play. The pedal-steel guitarist especially seemed to have been on a binge. The musicians all belonged on this seaweed-tossed beach, Mattie thought. They were a part of it, as if someone had watered the dunes with a hose and they had sprung up from the sand. But something looked different now. And then she saw that a new member had joined the band, a singer, a huge black woman with a real tambourine, a skirt of tennis netting, and wonderful spatulate fingers—forks, spoons, and butter knives—radiant in the last of the sun.
twelve
It was dark and cold at daybreak. When she went out to get the paper at quarter to seven, Mattie saw brilliant stars low in the sky, right there for the touching. She felt the bracing chill and snap of autumn on her skin. Twenty minutes later, as she poured coffee for Daniel and shot aerosol whipped cream into cups of cocoa for the children, she watched the sun rise, dense and thick and deep murky gold. She looked over at Daniel, who was working on the crossword puzzle. Who could have imagined, four years ago, that the Evergreen rat man standing on her front step, staring at the ground and unable to kill her rats, would one day be pushing the sugar bowl across the table to Ella, without looking up from his paper? His dreadlocks were even shorter now, clipped to within an inch of his head. He had cut them during a heat wave in July. Ella was growing out her hair, and it was in an awkward stage; multiple rubber bands and barrettes restrained it. Her nails were short, with chipped black polish, and she wore new green harlequin frames that Lee had helped her pick out. The Junior Miss Junkie Rock Star look was the latest rage in first grade, which Ella had begun a month before. Harry’s hair was spiky, styled with mousse every morning, all sticky, stiff fifth-grade cool.
When the phone rang, Daniel got up to answer it. Calls this early were often from Pauline, asking him questions about their house. They had tried for several months to sell it, but the real estate market had gone into a downturn, and they had decided to rent for the time being. Daniel was always kind to Pauline; she still hung up if Mattie or the children answered.
“Hello, Isa.” Daniel sounded relieved and surprised. “What are you doing up so early? . . . No, this is Daniel. Al lives at his house. But Mattie’s here.”
“Hi, Mom,” Mattie said. “What an odd time for you to call. What’s up?”
Isa’s voice often sounded flimsy these days, as if it might tear, like old rice paper. But this morning she was bursting with joyful news, her voice strong, and the problem was just that she could not quite remember the details. “Oh, Mattie,” she said, stalling, “I’ve never been so happy.”
“That’s wonderful. But what’s the news?”
“Oh, honest to Pete!” There were clicks and exhalations of frustration as Isa struggled to remember. “Tell me about you—what’s new, darling?”
“Mom, call me back when you remember, okay? I’m getting the kids off to school right now.”
“But this is very important! Can’t you think what it could be about?”
“Good news from your doctor?”
No.
“Something to do with Lewis?”
No.
“Something to do with my birthday?”
“Oh, is it your birthday soon?”
“Mom, it’s coming right up, October twenty-ninth! Remember? Angela’s having that big party for me at Stinson Beach.”
“Well, that’s nice,” Isa said, as if Mattie were rambling on. “But that’s not it.”
“Something to do with Tillie?”
“Yes, that’s it,” Isa said triumphantly. “Darling, Tillie and I want to marry!”
• • •
“Good Lord,” said Al, when Mattie reached him on the phone at school that morning. “Mom and Yvonne are getting married?”
“I haven’t confirmed this with Yvonne. But Mom thinks it’s happening.”
“Is our mom a lesbian? Will we have two mothers now?”
“I’ll have to consult with Angela and get back to you on that.”
• • •
Life was so strange, the weather shifting so often. There were warm, bright days, and days that were dark and quiet and cool. Now all Isa talked about was Tillie. Lewis was still her steadfast companion, with her for part of every day, but Tillie was now the object of Isa’s desire. She continued to call Yvonne Tillie. No one—least of all Yvonne—knew who Tillie was, or if there had ever been a Tillie in Isa’s life, yet in Isa’s presence, everyone carefully referred to Yvonne as Tillie.
“What time is Tillie coming over?” Isa would ask Mattie with heat. “Shouldn’t she be here by now? Lewis and I went to see her yesterday. She had lemon bars! And a new yellow shawl. Isn’t she beautiful?” Mattie got sick of it. Maybe she was jealous, that Yvonne, not herself or Al, would be the object of so much passion from their mother. Sometimes when Isa talked about Tillie, she thumped her chest to show the beating of her heart, and looked deranged with love.
“Mom says that you and she are getting married,” Mattie told Yvonne later that morning, as Yvonne made them cups of tea with her prisoner’s coil. Mattie had stopped by The Sequoias to see Isa but dropped by Yvonne’s first.
Yvonne shook her head; her necklaces clicked. Cracked-earth lines radiated from her mouth and eyes. “This is the first I’ve heard of it,” she said. “But she’s certainly latched on to me more lately. Every time she sees me, she cries out ‘Tillie!’ as if she’d given me up for dead.”
“I wonder if way deep down she associates you with Alfred,” Mattie mused. “So she gets Alfred back in the deal. He didn’t love her the way he loved you. But now, because he loved you, she gets to experience all that love she was so hungry for.”
Mattie rose to stand beside Yvonne at the window. “I know your father would want me to help take care of her, that’s all,” Yvonne said. “He would have tried to do it too, if he were still alive.”
Mattie thought of Abby’s ruined feet but said nothing. “So does this mean you’re not going to marry her?” she asked. She meant to say it lightly, but she felt disappointment on Isa’s behalf, among a welter of feelings. Yvonne shook her head no, and then walked with a hitch to one of her velvet chairs and sat down. Mattie followed.
• • •
Isa’s studio was clean, the windows open to let out the sour air. An aide had come earlier to help her get dressed, give her medicine, walk her to breakfast, and throw the sheets into the wash while she was gone. Isa sat in her easy chair watching TV. When Mattie moved into her line of sight, Isa’s face drooped with disappointment.
“Oh, I thought you were Tillie,” she said.
“Won’t you see her at lunch?” Mattie asked, a little defensively.
“Yes!” Isa thumped her chest like a primate. “Help me get ready. I need some rouge. Please, for once, do what I ask. Get me the rouge, and some lipstick.” Mattie retrieved Isa’s makeup from the bathroom, then stood beside her throne, a bitter lady-in-waiting.
She patted Isa’s nose with the powder puff, stroked on blusher, painted her lips with the lightest pink gloss. Isa looked as expectant as Ella in front of the vanity mirror when Mattie daubed on the gloss. “Will they let us marry?” Isa implored.
“Shh, shh,” Mattie whispered, handing Isa a tissue to blot her lips. “I’m not sure, Mom.”
When Isa was ready, in black silk and the pearls Alfred had given her on their twentieth anniversary, Isa focused on waiting for his mistress to come get her for lunch, so intently that she was unable to talk to Mattie at all.
• • •
“What’s it all about, Otis?” Mattie wondered, sitting beside the iguana late that afternoon. He stared, frozen, although his skin was made for the mo
st sinuous movement, armored and flexible at the same time, like chain mail. She still felt an undercurrent of edgy fear in his presence, this glorious fire-breathing dragon shrunken to the approximate size of a carrot. He was a little like Isa, she realized, so quiet, but scary still in his sudden bouts of frenzy. She smiled. “Help me, Otis,” she pleaded, but he didn’t move, didn’t blink. He might as well have been dead, already stuffed, except for the tiny pulse she noticed in his throat, flaring out with each breath. Mattie went to the kitchen for a lettuce leaf. When she lowered it into his cage, Otis darted across the bottom. She screamed, and Otis dashed back and forth, thin ribbons of shit spewing everywhere until he was done. Then he froze again, the quick and the dead in one convenient package.
Mattie sat watching him, then looked out the window, where an ice-blue sky unfolded, veiled with angel-wing clouds. In the tree branches she could see yellow, orange, rose, red, in lush, ecstatic leafiness. Daniel was off working with a contractor, helping to build a house in Lagunitas, near the hollowed-out redwood where Mattie and Daniel had sat together so long before. There were moments when she wished they could go back there, to the fresh beginnings. She had forgotten, while she’d been praying for a man, how hard it could be to live with someone—the seesaw of needs, the body’s betrayals. The horrible way Daniel scraped cottage cheese from the corners of his lips into his mouth. That he ate cottage cheese at all. They so often needed opposite things. She wanted to be alone when he wanted to be affectionate. She’d coquettishly asked for a cup of coffee with hot milk in bed one morning, and that night he brought home an espresso machine they couldn’t afford. She wanted to talk when he needed to be deeply silent.
But still, he was so endearing. Sometimes after he got ready for church he came to find her, and stood with his arms at his sides, like a little boy in his first suit from Sears. He taught Ella to hammer nails with the best of them, taught both kids to sew on buttons, and to iron. He taught them to sing “Joe Hill,” and to make cheese omelettes.
He’d also discovered Nicky’s porno movies, and that had made her want to die—or to leave him. But he’d wanted to watch them with her. She threw them out the following day, as leftovers from her life with Nicky. She’d found a diary Daniel had kept ever since meeting Pauline. She read it greedily, then confessed. He was mad at her for a full day and part of a second. He discovered that she didn’t keep track of the checks she wrote. She found out he didn’t floss very often, and hadn’t paid taxes one recent year. He found her old magazine photograph of the beaming Indian holy man with the parcel of rocks tied to his penis. It had been folded up and tucked in the drawer of her bedside table. She found him holding it in their bedroom. “What are you looking for?” she demanded. “You’re like a narc.”
Daniel kept looking at the picture, covering his crotch with his hand. “Ouch,” he said. She finally smiled. “Why do you keep this?” he asked.
She sat on the carpet beside him and took the picture of the destitute, naked, crazy-looking Indian man. “Because he’s doing something impossible and scary, and living through it,” she said. “Look at the weight he’s bearing—that’s gotta be ten pounds of rocks dangling there. But he’s saying to God, ‘I’m Yours, and You will sustain me. Look how well You’re doing!’”
Daniel kept his eyes on the picture. “That’s how you make me feel too.” He licked his lips, swallowed. “But I guess it’s too early to talk about, like, the possibility of marriage, right?”
“Oh, for Chrissakes,” she caught herself saying. “Way too early.” Her heart raced and chattered like wind-up teeth.
“In the spring, we’ll have been together a year,” Daniel said.
She felt herself blush and concentrated on breathing in, breathing out. She covered her face with her hands. “So tell me exactly what you’re asking,” she said, through her fingers.
“I’m asking you if you would marry me sometime in the spring.”
She felt his hand against hers. The cupped palm of her hand grew slick with tears. “I’ll wear the rocks to the wedding, if you want me to,” he whispered. They sat close together, heads averted. He nuzzled the side of her head, and she let herself cry, and then wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Daniel lifted his T-shirt to wipe her eyes and nose.
He was looking at her as if she were his own sleeping child.
“Well?” he asked.
She closed her eyes, smiling, and nodded. “I have to get back to you about the rocks,” she said.
• • •
There was a crispness to the night. Daniel got the children to bed while Mattie sat outside wrapped in a blanket. She looked up at the stars and thought about her wedding in the spring. The smell of the earth in April would be so rich. You got the bursting soil and also what it was bursting with. And the golden evenings grew longer and the night did not close in on you.
• • •
She and Daniel told the children the news together the next morning over breakfast. “We’re going to get married in the spring,” Mattie said gently, and Ella clapped her hands to her cheeks. But Harry gave Daniel a fatherly sideways look. This Rasta bum wanted to marry his mother?
“Whatever,” he said, and went to his room. Mattie followed. She found him sitting on his bed, flipping baseball cards into the trashcan. She stretched out on his bed, and eventually he lay down beside her.
“I thought you loved Daniel,” she said.
She couldn’t see his face, because they were looking in the same direction, but she rubbed his shoulder blades and listened to his tickertape of worry.
“I do love Daniel. But what about Pauline? It’s horrible for her,” he said. “She used to be our friend. And then Ella’s getting fat, you know. A boy at the pool teased her about her stomach. And Daniel has dreadlocks, so people stare at him already, and everyone’s just looking at our family. And what about Daddy? What if Daddy and Lee break up? Daddy couldn’t come back to us, because then us would also be Daniel.”
This startled Mattie. She caught herself from reassuring him too quickly, making short work of his worries. “I know it’s hard in some ways, because none of us knows what’s going to happen,” she said. That uncertainty now filled her like a cool compound slipping into her cracks and holes. “But won’t it still be great? He’s so good, and funny and sweet.”
“But he’s terrible at sports,” Harry said. “He’s not even good at catch. And he runs funny—no offense. I wish we had a regular family.”
• • •
When Mattie went to tell Isa, she couldn’t find her in her studio. She eventually found her at Lewis’s, watching tennis on TV and eating lasagne. Mattie kissed them both, and pulled up a chair.
“I have some news for you,” she began. “Daniel and I are getting married in the spring.”
Isa recoiled, as though she had been shot. “What?” she demanded. “Are you out of your mind?” She glared at Lewis.
“That’s wonderful news,” said Lewis, taking Mattie’s hands in his. “Will Pastor marry you? Will you marry at church?”
“Yes, to both, I think. We haven’t discussed many details. But I’d like you to walk me down the aisle, Lewis.” He clutched her hands to his chest. Mattie looked at Isa. Her mother had taken out her dentures and placed them on her plate of lasagne, as if she meant to expose her valves, to frighten them both back into submission.
“But will they let us marry? Tillie and me?” Isa cried. “Can’t you for even one time in your life think about someone besides yourself?”
Lewis stared at Isa. Then he turned to Mattie, still clasping her hands, and bowed his head. “May I recite the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians in the service?” he asked. She nodded, of course. It was the “New York, New York” of the New Testament, but if Lewis wanted to recite it, that was fine by her.
• • •
Angela had gone all-out for Mattie’s birthday. She had borrowed a house on Stinson Beach from her girlfriend Julie’s cousin, rented umbrellas, tables,
and chairs from Big 4, and set them up on the beach halfway between the house and the water. Julie had flown up that morning and picked flowers from the garden, to make bouquets for the tables. Shish kebabs were marinating in the kitchen, coals were ready to be lit under grills in the backyard. Angela had asked guests to bring side dishes and drinks.
People came from church, and the same old friends from the didgeridoo party came as well. Noah didn’t, even though Mattie had left a message on his machine inviting him. He’d called back two days later to say he couldn’t be there—and asked if she could drop by for a beer some night after work. The next day, when she went to the superette, she found that Noah had left her a present, wrapped in the Sunday comic pages. She knew before opening it that it would be the little blue shoe.
Angela had called Ned to invite him, without including William. Daniel had invited a few guys from his construction crew, Al some people he and Mattie had gone to high school with. He and Katherine arranged to pick up Isa, Lewis, and Yvonne.
Mattie and Angela shopped for clothes in a vintage store the day before the party. Both now wore size 14. They chose dresses that were elegant and girlish but not totally frou-frou; they wanted something that was flowing and, as Angela put it, forgiving: “We’re going to eat a lot, and we don’t want our middles constricted,” she said. Mattie selected a celadon-green silk dress, very simple and 1920s, a koan of a color, bright and light and muted at the same time—the color of a rice bowl. Angela bought a light-purple shift; she would wear a wreath of flowers in her hair. She brought an outfit for Ella from Hollywood—a miniature black velvet evening gown with puffy sleeves and pink rosettes, and a tiny purse. Ella filled the purse with Kleenex, a tube of pink lip gloss, and a medal she’d won in an art contest at school. Harry wore a gray suit from Mervyn’s that Nicky had taken him shopping for, a clip-on tie, and a lot of styling gel to spike his hair.
Daniel wore his good suit, light khaki, debonair. He had the blue shoe in his pocket in the morning, but gave it to Mattie when it grew cold and windy later. She was having a bad brain day, worrying about the darkening weather, what kind of shape Isa would be in, whether there’d be enough food. When people began to arrive with food and presents, it seemed the ultimate miracle, to have good people love you, freaked-out, self-centered mess that you were.