“I thought I was, but I think now what I am is sorry for all the other stuff that happened afterward.”
“You’re not helping yourself, you know that?”
She rose from the bench and paced the sidewalk. “You think I’m going back?”
The guard pried a piece of gum from the arm of the bench. “I’m not sure why you got out in the first place.”
The doors to the hospital opened with a mechanical whoosh. Bets stepped out, shading her eyes against the early morning light. She addressed the guard briskly in the tone that many older women were able to use to successfully guilt younger people into action. “She’s not fighting you anymore. Go on and let her out of those plastic restraints.”
Using a utility knife from his pocket, the guard slit the plastic from her wrists. Deborah felt the cold of the blade against the back of her hand. Her arms were numb and felt useless dangling at her sides. Bets put her hand on the guard’s shoulder and leaned down, speaking quietly. Although Deborah couldn’t hear them, she heard the urging in Bets’s voice and was unsurprised when the guard rose from the bench and announced his intentions to find some coffee and check on the policeman’s progress upstairs.
“Being a mother is as full of tragedy as it is triumph,” Bets said. “If I had to do it all over again, I’d put more distance between us. Having us here, always together, hasn’t allowed for any fondness to grow between us. Callie and I’ve always had a difficult time. She was never the child I expected her to be and she’s never forgiven me for letting her know that. I, I—”
“Grandma, this isn’t your fault,” Deborah said, her numb arms sharp with the pinpricks of pain as the circulation returned to normal.
“It is. She’s the way she is because of me, and you two are just the wrong sort of fit. I don’t understand how God could put two people together who consistently bring out the worst in each other.”
“At least God gave me you,” Deborah said, reaching her still tingling arms out.
They embraced. An ambulance with only its lights on pulled into the driveway and two paramedics unloaded an elderly man, who turned his head and gave them a watery smile as he rolled past them. Deborah became aware of the sounds of Kidron waking up—more cars hummed along the surface streets around the parking lot. A few of the nightshift nurses had gathered in the smoking cupola at the edge of the parking lot.
“Are you leaving?” Bets whispered into her ear.
“How bad is it?”
“Bad. The hospital administrator wants you arrested, but Anna talked Callie out of pressing any charges, and she told them she just fell over. If I weren’t so old, they probably wouldn’t have trusted leaving the two of us alone. But you know how easy it is to underestimate Anna or even myself.”
Bets pressed her keys into Deborah’s hand. “There’s money in Anna’s sock drawer and in the coffee can on top of the refrigerator. Callie never locks the safe in her office if you can get—”
“I’ll be fine. Tell me about Erin’s baby.”
They stood together for several more minutes, and she listened to her grandmother describe the two perfect dimples on her grandson’s cheeks and the way he crossed his fingers while he slept.
SELECTED E-MAILS EXCHANGED BETWEEN CALLIOPE AND AMRIT
From: Amrit Hashmi [email protected]
Subject: Congratulations and Condolences
Date: May 21, 2007 8:48:12 AM PST
To: Callie [email protected]
Cham-Cham,
I would tell you that a fruit slips and falls into milk, but how can I explain this to you. It is to say that you must not think of your daughter’s leaving as all bad. There is so much joy in your house now and we cannot always see the good that will come of actions that appear to be harmful.
How is the baby? I will have to admit that I, too, was hoping for a girl, but perhaps this little boy (Keller is it?) will prove me wrong, or right. Again I’m back to the fruit slipping into milk.
It is difficult for me to understand the relationship you have with your daughter. My wife and her mother were like sisters and I think even more so as we came to admit we were never going to have our own children. I once asked her if she’d gotten along with her mother when she was a teenager (you know we married when she was just nineteen, so she never knew much outside her parents’ house) and she told me that all daughters fight with their mothers. So maybe you and Deborah are just reliving the fights you couldn’t have because she’s been away so long. I’m sure wherever she is that she’s safe.
The research is going well, I think if we continue on the pace that we’ve set that I should be back for a follow-up visit in early July. I know we’ve talked about this before, but you, your family, is turning out to be exactly what I needed for so long.
I am writing to you from work, or I’d be more bold in my declarations. The laboratory is too sterile and our visit in March feels so long ago. I will look forward to our conversation this evening, when I can be the other man. The Amrit who you bare your soul to.
xxA
From: Callie [email protected]
Subject: RE: Congratulations and Condolences
Date: May 22, 2007 7:21:45 PM EST
To: Amrit Hashmi [email protected]
Darling,
If you were here I wouldn’t have so much trouble getting out of bed every day. (Or maybe I would, but at least it would be for a good reason.) Nobody here knows what to say to anyone—especially Erin. She had such hopes that having her mother here would solve all of her problems. I guess it is better for her to realize she needs to work out the situation with Keller’s father head-on and stop dodging his phone calls.
The baby is perfect. I wish you’d had children, then you’d understand what I mean when I tell you how much peace holding a newborn can give you. Erin thinks he cries so loud and nearly panics each time he opens his mouth, but his cry is so small and unselfish, that listening to it makes me feel better. Like I understand that he’s just crying out for food or because he wants to be warm or held and that’s sort of why we’re all crying. Or at least why I’m crying.
I haven’t been able to face the Pit. I tried yesterday to go in. You’ll laugh at me if I tell you that it’s just too cold, but for us Californians it is. There’s so much that Nancy won’t take care of if I’m not there. The place will get dirty, and she has no idea how much the money that Deb stole is going to hurt the store. I should try to put it back myself, but I don’t have it and I can’t ask Anna for it. I know I should be able to, but I don’t want her or Bets to know what my daughter did. It was bad enough that I couldn’t just let her be, that I had to pick a fight with her.
I wish I could be the woman you thought I was and I wish you’d tell me what a cham-cham is or at least promise to show me when you come back to Kidron.
xxC
From: Amrit Hashmi [email protected]
Subject: letter
Date: May 23, 2007 10:32:19 AM PST
To: Callie [email protected]
Cham-Cham,
Your letter arrived yesterday. I cannot begin to write down all the ways that I feel about you, but please know that it is more than my interest in your family. My lovely Padra who died so many years ago never had what we had. You must understand that, your husband, too, gave you some but not everything. I am overwhelmed by the emotion and I don’t trust myself to even say this to you on the phone. My first wife and I, we were strangers when we met and we had the passion of youth on our side that blinded us to how little other connection we felt.
But you, with your letter. I won’t write it, but to answer your question, yes we have so much more together than I’ve ever had before. And as much as I want to be with you, there is work to be done. Important work, research that will change so much for you and your life. I can see the message light on my phone blinking and the e-mail will not stop dinging at me. I will see you soon and we will have a heart talk. One that will explain what is between
us.
xxA
From: Callie [email protected]
Subject: too long
Date: May 27, 2007 9:58:43 PM EST
To: Amrit Hashmi [email protected]
Darling,
Every night after we talk, I think of a dozen other things that I should have said to you. It is sweet to hear your voice, but it all feels so insubstantial. I lied earlier. I didn’t get out of bed the entire day. I said it so that you wouldn’t think me weak, but I just took my pills and drifted in and out of sleep. I reread the letters you’ve sent me and I looked at all the magazines in the house. My mother tried to get me out of bed. She started nice in the morning with homemade cinnamon rolls, but by the time she went to bed, she had resorted to idle threats. Anna told her to leave me alone.
Tell me more about the sequencing. I don’t understand any of it, but I do hope that some good comes from it. If not for us, then for somebody else. Do they have some disease that our DNA could cure? Do children age rapidly like that dumb movie with Robin Williams? Can you cure that? I should try to understand more of what you’re doing.
Please come soon.
xxC
From: Amrit Hashmi [email protected]
Subject: research
Date: May 30, 2007 6:13:29 AM PST
To: Callie [email protected]
Cham-Cham,
Forgive me for not responding earlier. As I said on the phone, there is so much to be done before I can come for my visit and explain it all to you better. You maybe know about ambrosia? It is a drink for the gods that the Greeks said if man took even a sip of he could attain immortality. We have an Indian word for this drink—it is amrit. A common enough name, but one picked by my parents for sentimental reasons. They told me that the best way to ensure immortality was by having children. My mother used to take my face in her delicate hands and kiss me all over—declaring that I was the perfect mix of my father and her and that it was my job to make my own children who would be a mix of my parents and also of me and my wife.
But you know about this sorrow. There were no children. We found out that I could never give Padra the babies she wanted when we were in Spain and I had first started working with this idea that an organism could achieve biological immortality.
You can see where this is going. There are so many little steps from you and your family to ambrosia. But I believe it is possible. I know that if we can figure out why people age and why some people age far slower than others, that we can find a way to extend our lives. Do not tell anyone this. The study of aging is so new and fraught with moral dilemmas. To others I talk about cures for the diseases of age, but we all know, we all understand, that if we can cure the things that kill people, then we can cure death itself.
I could tell you so much more about sirtuins and the keys they hold to keeping our cells young, or about the idea that so much of what goes wrong in the body is completely attributed to inflammation. But what good will that do you? What I want to do is good old-fashioned science. I want to study you and your mother and her mother and find out what makes you age so slowly. Maybe it is proteins or maybe it is some mechanism that we haven’t found yet, or don’t have the capability to find, but that is what I’m doing, what I’m looking for.
I miss you with all my heart.
xxA
Calliope in Summer
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Sole Survivor
A full month passed before Calliope set foot in the Pit Stop. She tried in the days just after Deb’s escape to return to the store, but every time she worked up enough energy, the cold stopped her dead. Nothing made her leg hurt more than chilly weather. That excuse and others allowed her to spend weeks sitting with Erin and her baby boy, Keller, on the porch, watching the north wind stir the leaves in the orchard. At first, Anna and Bets tiptoed around them, but gradually their patience waned. She and Erin made promises to each other. “If I wake up and can’t see my breath, I’ll . . .” they’d say and rattle off a list of all that had been left undone. Nature gave them until mid-June, when the sun finally warmed up and the talk in Kidron turned from Deb’s escape to fruit set.
The warmth rejuvenated Calliope—her smiles came easier, and she needed fewer pills to control the pain in her leg. After two or three sunny mornings, she began to wake up buoyed by the possible. With this attitude, she arrived at the Pit Stop well before Nancy, who’d been acting as manager during Calliope’s absence. The morning sun streaming into the front windows exposed a film of filth that had settled over much of the store. The Pit Stop needed a good cleaning. Calliope examined each square foot, making note of the grime between jars, dust underneath shelving, and scuff marks on the linoleum flooring.
“I see you took the poster down,” Nancy said as Calliope inspected the few cobwebs that occupied the front corners of the store. At the request of the police, Nancy had put the wanted poster with Deb’s picture up in the window. If Calliope had been there, it wouldn’t have gone up, but Nancy often mistook herself for the owner and made decisions that weren’t hers to make. She was sure she’d eventually find an excuse to hang the posters back up.
“It felt right,” Calliope said, rubbing away the last traces of tape on the window with her fingernail. “She’s never going to be found.”
“Nobody’s looking all that hard. She not only broke her parole, she stole from us. Do you know how much she took? How much was in that safe? What’d you tell the police—some smaller number, I’m sure,” Nancy said, putting on the glasses that hung from a chain around her neck. The cashier, although she was the same age as Calliope, managed to look years older.
“We told the police everything we could. Erin’s taken her mother leaving again hard. She hasn’t left the house in weeks, and then I keep finding her asleep in the living room, the baby at her nipple and an atlas open on her lap. She’d give the world to not have had her momma run, and a little more to at least find out where she’s gone to.”
“That granddaughter of yours has been through too much for one lifetime,” Nancy said.
“I should have warned her about Deb—about how you can’t let someone else failing to live up to your expectations ruin you. I spent most of my life feeling like I was somehow responsible for my daughter, that I was as guilty of killing Carl as she was. And then when she ran, somehow this time she took all of that guilt I had with her. I just worry she left some of it behind with Erin.”
“She’s got the baby now. That should help,” Nancy said, looking over the top of her glasses in a way that made Calliope feel like the pain pills were letting her mouth run on. Nancy had been around a long time, and Calliope was sure she had her own thoughts about the Keller women.
“Do you feel that way about your grandbabies?” Calliope knew asking this was mean. Nancy didn’t have any children of her own. She hadn’t married until she was in her late fifties, but her husband, an Elvis impersonator, had six or seven kids of his own.
“We feel how we feel,” Nancy said, with a tremble in her voice that could have been emotion or the suppression of a cough.
Calliope nodded. Nancy’s stepchildren were all bastards, born by women stupid enough to think that sleeping with a man who looked like Elvis was near enough to the real deal. Nancy treated all his kids like they were hers, but they didn’t always reciprocate. Over the years, she’d seen Nancy try to make amends for her husband, spending most of her salary on gifts for them and the grandchildren. Mr. Elvis, as Calliope thought of him, was retired now and only put on the jumpsuit to do a monthly show at the American Legion up in Redding.
“How are things with you and the doctor?” Nancy asked, as if sensing Calliope’s thoughts had turned to relationships. In the years since Calliope’s husband had died, Nancy had become a confidante. The cashier knew about the few flings, one-night stands, and affairs that Calliope had gotten herself mixed up in over the years. She heard details Calliope was too ashamed to share with her family, especially her mother
. Bets’s morality was rigid and passionless. Nancy, despite being reserved, listened to Calliope’s confessions as if they were teenagers. And yet, this time, Calliope held back many of the juiciest details of her relationship with Amrit.
She and Amrit had made love on the night he first arrived in Kidron. From the moment she’d heard his voice on the phone, Calliope had known she would sleep with him. Seeing him, that first day, sitting near him on their too-soft couch that rolled people toward one another, heightened her desire. During their excruciatingly polite lunch conversation, she’d elicited his room number and then after her mother and Anna had finally gone to bed, she drove to the motel, put on a fresh coat of lipstick, slipped on four-inch heels, and knocked on his door. She never once considered the possibility of rejection.
Amrit had been married for thirty years to a dutiful wife. They’d had no children, and she’d died quite unexpectedly from an aneurism the year she turned fifty. He told Calliope this and more after the fifth time they’d made love. That day he’d confessed that he and his wife had never been together unless they were in their own bed with the lights off. Calliope laughed, and then realizing that he might misunderstand her joy, she took his hand and confessed that although she’d been with too many men in too many places, what she felt with him was entirely different. While they spoke, he traced the outline her hardened nipple made against her thin silk blouse, and before their stories were finished, they’d undressed and made love in the front seat of his rental car in an abandoned field with a view of Mount Shasta.
The passion Calliope experienced with Amrit made what she’d felt for her own husband, and for the other men she’d slept with, seem like mere excitement. After he returned to Pittsburgh, she found she couldn’t drive anyplace without getting lost. Landmarks she’d used her whole life to mark intersections took on new shapes to her eyes. The elm at the corner of C Street and Polk now looked like two trees twined together, and the house with the blue door at the corner of Main and F Street seemed to morph from a two-story ranch to a slatternly Colonial in the space of just a few days.
The Roots of the Olive Tree Page 16