by Rick Lenz
I get back in the car, noticing it’s a tan Oldsmobile 88, and drive on along the country desert road in the West San Fernando Valley. I don’t know where I’m going. It’s as if I’m not dreaming but am newly awakened to discover myself, not driving this car, but as a tongue-tied passenger in the back seat of a speeding limousine whose destination I don’t know. There is nothing I can do about it and no way to get out. At the same time, I don’t want to get out. It is simply my path for the moment and there’s no point in fighting it. I remember going to Saturday matinees when I was a kid, peeking out between my fingers at Godzilla on the movie screen. It’s like that, too. I’m scared to death, but I have to know what’s going to happen next.
Glancing at the rearview mirror, I see the Valley and the Santa Monica Mountains to the south behind me.
I hit the brakes and pull to the side of the road. I turn off the engine and swivel the mirror to look at myself.
It is not Jack Cade.
But whoever it is, he is definitely wide awake.
I wish I’d stopped in at Carmine’s Car Wash for the free psychiatric help. I’ve paid too little attention to such needs—probably why Sophie is leaving me. From the moment I got the pawn ticket, my life has been moving in slow motion. Now it has decelerated to a bare crawl. All my boundaries have become blurred. The boundaries between the boundaries have become blurred—between now and time past, between day and nighttime, between what I wish for and what I get, between who I am and who I think I am. And what I wish for now is that it could all be simple again, and that I could be in some warm, friendly restaurant with Sophie, sipping coffee and feeling … unafraid.
And now, reductio ad absurdum, what’s left of my mind conjures the final image of my nightmare: someone sitting in a rocking chair, lit by a single lamp.
I look again at the image in the mirror. The notion that I might possibly be conscious and now no longer one but two people slowly begins to turn itself over in my mind like a loop of film in a projector without a light source, and I’m helpless to provide one. One thing I know: This is beyond doubt not a man in a typical state of twilight sleep.
I stare at the man in the rearview mirror for I can’t imagine how long. No illuminating thought comes to me, except that we seem to be traveling together, this Richard Blake—if that’s who he is—and me. We are, for the moment it seems, chauffeur and visitor. But it’s as if there’s a sign that says Don’t talk to the driver. And Richard, the driver, won’t or can’t talk to me.
I continue staring into the eyes the way Maggie Partridge stared into mine. She used the word “miracle,” then dismissed it. She said miracles only appear to be miracles because of our selective perceptual filters. I examine the face of the man in the mirror.
What would I have expected if I could have imagined this? That Richard would look like Jack? The truth is, if my eyes are giving me accurate information, Richard is better looking; not exactly an Adonis, but a solid leading-man face and head attached to what appears to be a well-toned body. He has deep-set hazel eyes, a straight aquiline nose a little on the generous size, good cheekbones, utilitarian mouth and chin, and thick brown hair brushed back from his face. It occurs to me that I could have borrowed this guy’s looks for a couple of movies I was up for in the early nineties. We’re about the same age. I could have done worse. The only thing I might have tried to do something about was the lack of humor in his eyes.
But that’s not so surprising. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out Richard may not be finding this to be an amusing experience.
Why doesn’t he speak up? Are these my thoughts alone? Does this other … person have no say in his own life? If I am now myself, Jack Cade, sharing a body with this Richard Blake, is he letting me control him? In any case, he doesn’t look like a miracle, he looks like a … guy … and for sure not a guy in a dream.
But between me and me, what does it matter? The business I’ve spent almost all my adult life in is, face it, escapism. I and whoever this is I’m being carried around in—this Richard, I guess—we are a study in escapism. We seem to be coming together to play one role for the moment. No! Two roles.
Driving again, feverish as Frankenstein’s monster out on his own for the first time, I take a right turn off the road I’ve been on and head northwest. The San Gabriel Mountains rise from the desert floor ahead of me, richly mauve and purple, and more vivid than when I last noticed them on the way out to meet Maggie Partridge, only about three hours after my wife told me she thought we needed some time “away” from each other.
I make another turn, drive through scrub bush and scattered boulders for about fifty yards, then pull to a stop, partly in the shadow of a scrawny yucca tree. I reach into the back seat, grab a case of geologist’s tools, open it, and find exactly what I somehow know I will: a couple of short-handled shovels, some hand hoes, several other small digging/scraping implements, and seven or eight variously configured files.
There is some quartz on the underside of a sandstone cluster at the bottom of a crevasse beyond the yucca tree. I work my way down and proceed to harvest as much as I can.
I am a gemologist scrambling around an arroyo, collecting a kind of quartz I’ve never heard of before—desert rose. It is gray-lavender, and the variety I’ve found is so granular that it’s used mostly for decorative purposes and has little industrial value.
“It’s got to be a dream,” I say out loud, recognizing but not recognizing the voice.
I hold my right hand with my left to pinch it.
I feel a ring on the ring finger. I hold up my hand and stare at it. It looks like Jack Cade’s alexandrite.
But that’s impossible. I bring the ring closer to my eyes, squinting at it. “It’s im-fucking-possible.”
I turn, lose my footing, and lurch off to do what I know I have to do—travel with Richard Blake. He’s alive in there; he’s going to do at least some of what … he’s going to do. But I have a say in his life.
Then again, I don’t know. Right now, it’s obvious Richard Blake is due somewhere, and I don’t have any choice but to go along for the ride.
I pack up the quartz in small plastic canisters and drive off, still heading northwest in the Valley.
I pull into the driveway at 1833 Shoemaker Drive again.
It looks the same as it did when I got there after my stop at Dick’s Gas and Hot Food, only now the trim needs painting and it seems as if the place is not being cared for as well as the county will be doing it forty years later. The driveway is now cement and the agaves have not yet been planted alongside it. The surrounding area is almost all brand new. Most of the houses have been built very recently, and there are several under construction. Off to the north, which will be developed all the way to the mountains by 1996, there is nothing but a vast sweep of orange groves.
As I walk around toward the back door, a sinewy, rodent-faced woman of about fifty-five peers over into my backyard. Her eyes are dark and purposeful, mean like a cartoon rat.
Our gazes meet for an instant, then she acts as if she hasn’t seen me. She produces a pair of pruning shears and behaves as if her only purpose for being at the edge of her property is to trim a camellia bush.
I walk into the backyard.
Two women sit beneath a large mesquite tree. I wonder who they are and what I’ll say to them, although I realize with fascination that part of me already knows.
The elder of the two, who is in her midthirties, is seated in a lawn chair with a cocktail in one hand and a book in the other. I (Richard) look at her again, and I (Jack), for the first time. I see that she is a striking woman. She has shining black hair pulled tightly back into a chignon and fastened with hairpins. I often find myself casting people I meet in roles they might play if they were actors. This woman would play headmistresses or mother superiors—ones who might be in danger of transgressing in dark and unnatural ways. Her name is Margaret Blake. She is Richard’s wife.
The other woman, whose name is Lil
y St. Carnes, is her sister. If Margaret’s arresting looks don’t always register, it’s because she is almost always with Lily, whose beauty commands attention. She has a satiny complexion and dark eyes like her sister’s, but larger and deep. They are a bottomless cobalt blue. They watch people with an unashamed curiosity that invites intimacy and sometimes slides over into insolence or a childlike vulnerability.
Something else about her: she is the golden-haired woman in the oil painting that was hanging over the fireplace in the living room of 1833 Shoemaker Drive when I met Maggie Partridge. If I didn’t know that Lily has been mentally troubled from birth, I’d cast her in a second as Helen of Troy or a blonde Cleopatra, or possibly—as I glance warily at her—Marilyn Monroe.
It strikes me that Marilyn is still alive, and at the peak of her career. She is probably, at this moment, only a few miles away on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains. I wonder what she’s doing. She’s probably looking around at her peculiar surroundings like I am at mine, nervous as a cat set loose in a strange neighborhood.
Lily sits in a children’s swing that hangs from the bottom limb of the mesquite tree. Her eyes glow and she beams an open, enchanting smile at me.
I kiss Margaret on the cheek. “Hello, dear. Good evening, Lily.”
Margaret makes no effort to return the gesture, but Lily echoes the greeting in a happy, quavery voice. “Hello, Richard.” She continues to swing.
“What is it, Richard?” says Margaret as I study my circumstances.
“Nothing.” I study her. “I’m sorry I’m late. I found some desert rose quartz over on Hillshire. The University of Wisconsin wanted me to find them some, so I stopped to collect it.”
“Do you remember we were planning to go out to eat tonight?”
“Of course I do.” There is a combative edge to my voice.
There are no words to describe how startling it is to have such firsthand knowledge of another human being’s … being. But again, although I sense Richard intimately, I don’t think I sense him—at least yet—very deeply. I’m aware of one other thing: Richard seems to be very interested in Jack.
“I’m going to wear my elegant dress,” says Lily.
“Are you?”
“Oh, yes. But Margaret hasn’t pressed it yet. Margaret had better press my elegant dress.”
Margaret makes a clicking sound with her mouth. “Would you like to hear me scream, Richard?”
“No, thank you.”
“She can, too,” says Lily. “Today she screamed at the radio. I don’t like it when we’re not nice.” She smiles. “We’re not always in our right senses out here.”
Margaret makes her clicking sound again. “That about sums it up.”
“You don’t have to be alone. You can come with me.”
“Rock hunting? It gets old, Richard. It gets old if it’s not your passion.”
“I have to earn a living.” She doesn’t respond. “You have books and radio … and the television.”
“Have you looked at the television, Richard?”
“I know the reception isn’t too good.”
“Isn’t too good? Like any other sensible thing, the TV signals don’t want to come all the way out to this godforsaken nowhere.”
“They’re working on a cable system. Once it’s perfected, they’ll be able to send TV signals anywhere.”
“That’s nice. Only by then I’ll be as batty as my sister.” She looks at me with something both pleading and dismissing.
I hold my hand out, just as I did to Maggie Partridge—moments ago? An hour ago? I say supercasually, “Do you remember where I got this ring?”
Margaret studies me as if I’m the crazy man I’m sure I am. “I have no idea, Richard. You’ve always had it. Don’t you know?”
“I forget. Isn’t that odd?” I don’t wait for a response; I grin foolishly and excuse myself.
Inside the house, I notice several not only nicely made, but I’m pretty sure the real deal, Georgian pieces of furniture. They must be worth a small fortune. Margaret and Lily inherited them. At a well-stocked bar, I pour myself a double Dewars over ice and move out onto the back porch, a large screened-in room furnished with rattan chairs and a glass-top rattan table.
I sit in a comfortable chair next to the backyard, sipping the drink. I can taste the Scotch. I feel hunger pangs and a soft breeze on my face, hands, and arms, and the relief of sitting in a comfortable chair. I also have the dismaying sensation of not knowing, if I had to sign my name right now, whose signature I’d use. It is not clear who’s driving this Jack/Richard buggy. So far, the control seems to be very much mine. So far. This occupation of Richard’s body feels as if it’s the most challenging role of a lifetime.
From where I am, I can hear and see Lily and Margaret, but they couldn’t see me unless they were to get up close to the porch and peer in. Neither of them shows any indication of having heard me.
Lily is humming. Margaret sits as before, her book in her lap, sipping her drink.
Now Lily sings in time with her swinging:
Two old maids in a folding bed—
One turned over to the other and said—
She segues into:
I’ll get by as long as I have you—
She stops, looks over at Margaret, and says in a pouty voice, “You always laugh when I sing that.” When Margaret doesn’t reply, Lily tells her, “That’s a radio song.”
Margaret looks up listlessly at her. “I know.”
Lily winds the swing up as tight as she can with a series of little steps around and around in a small circle, then lifts her feet, leans back, and lets herself spin until she and the swing have come to a near rest. “That makes me dizzy every time I do it.” She leans her head back and stares up at the sky. “Read to me from the story.”
“But you don’t know what’s happened in the last three chapters.”
“That’s all right. I still like it when you read the mysteries to me.”
Margaret sighs, then reads aloud:
“‘Marianne felt as if she were slipping now, slipping through all the years of her youth—afloat in a whirlpool of all the times, places, and people she’d ever known. But always, always aware of the eyes, the eyes of the man who was watching her now—’”
Lily has started to hum “I’ll Get By” softly, widening her eyes then closing them, over and over, as she listens to her sister.
When Margaret trails off in disgust, Lily looks up. “Why did you stop?”
“You’re humming. I won’t read to you if you hum.”
“But I like to hum.”
I was once arrested. I was a child, sitting in a roomful of comic books, reading. A friend and I had gone in through a window that somebody else had already broken in an abandoned house, and we’d found someone’s Golden Age comic book collection of vintage Atlas and National titles. We sat among these four-color treasures, poring through them—until a routine check of the neighborhood and this abandoned house by the local police yielded up a pair of villainous comic book aficionados. The other kid was cool about it. I froze, as if I’d been caught strolling into the Department of the Treasury with a sawed-off shotgun. It was the pressure of the moment. It was real life that was the problem. Once I get to know the situation, I’m okay. It’s just these extemporaneous moments in unfamiliar circumstances that give me difficulty, occasions like this whole thing, for example—being under posthypnotic suggestion in some strange house at the far end of the San Fernando Valley and a raw-boned female physicist suggests that I spend a little time in a previous incarnation, and I immediately respond as if she’s asked me to pass the salt or something—that I find myself in trouble. I’m a good actor when I can slip into the flow of things, but a lousy auditioner. I don’t or can’t apply cold, detached logic to a problem—except at moments when I’m not trying, or at least not trying too hard.
Only now I have no choice but to bear down and think this out rationally. Even if it doesn’t work, I h
ave to try to apply some common sense to this one.
I don’t know where to begin. I’ve always hoped my unconscious has its own kind of intelligence, to guide my hapless conscious—if it can ever get through to it. I’m convinced that if I’ve ever had an important thought it has come from deep in some vault I have no wakeful access to.
But now I have two vaults to try to crack and one of them appears to be sealed as tight as a pharaoh’s tomb. The only thing I know for sure at the moment is that this Richard Blake has some strange and shadowy forces at work inside of him. Talk about the ghost in the machine.
Looking out a living room window, I notice a newspaper on the front porch. I bolt outside, pick it up and read the headline: de Gaulle Out of Retirement.
I look at the date:
Tuesday, April 10, 1956
“Jesus.” I repeat myself, whispering it slowly: “Je-sus!”
In the bright sunshine, I look at the alexandrite ring I clearly recognize and wonder how it will find its way from bright green on Richard Blake’s hand in 1956 to murky purple on Jack Cade’s in the dusky gloom of Morgan’s Gifts in 1996.
I close the front door behind me, go into the living room and stare at the picture of Lily above the fireplace. I’m amazed at how accurately the painter has captured her vulnerability, the detail of her, her overall beauty, her essence, her touching fragments of hope.
I climb the stairs. At the top, I stop and look back down at the foyer and the passageway beyond it.
I unlock the door to my room with a key. I know it’s the only interior door in the house with a key lock. I feel as if I ought to know why, but I don’t know a lot of things yet—including whether I ever will, and Richard is volunteering nothing. I go into the room—a large, all-white chamber with a vaulted ceiling and two dormer windows, plus a spacious bathroom with art deco porcelain fixtures.