by Rick Lenz
I feel a shot of adrenalin, find her message, and start to read it.
Jack, it’s me, Sophie.
This is awkward. But this is not how I pictured my life. You don’t seem to want to … or to be able to control your drinking. Maybe you can get it under control and we can try it again. But I have to go before I start hating you. I deserve better than this. So do you. It’s funny, I want to go stay with my best friend. Nothing against Jean, but you’re my best friend.
GOD! I’m so sick of Hollywood! Show business! Acting! Watching you bang your head against that wall. I remember you testing for that pilot. I think it was five times over about two months, and you got it, and the day before you were supposed to start shooting, they cut your damned part out of the show. Why would you want to go on living that way? And that kind of thing happens over and over.
I feel like we’re falling down a hole and there’s no way out. I’m scared. I’m afraid I can’t make it on my own—thanks, Mom and Dad. But you seem so helpless and I'm not strong enough to save the both of us. Sometimes I think I’m still young enough and pretty enough to attract another man but that scares the shit out of me even more.
I don't want much. I just want to pay the bills and go out to dinner once in awhile—maybe a weekend in Palm Springs. Oh golly, Jack, I remember one time going swimming in a motel pool, then making love, lying in bed with you a whole afternoon and evening, our hair all snarled and tangled, and we still smelled of chlorine when we went out for dinner at ten o’clock that night. And it was just an ordinary motel, but who cares? We were alive and feeling … joy and blissful just being together.
But now we’re always, always scrabbling for a living. Our cars are held together with duct tape. I actually fantasize being with one of those weekend roadie cyclist guys who wears one of those dopey hats, but I wouldn’t mind, because at least he can afford his dopey hat and his bike and all that snazzy spandex. That scares me. I’ve had some wine.
We don’t have children. That’s my fault, I know. You told me in the beginning that we could but I was even terrified of getting married. We don’t even have a dog or a cat or a fucking goldfish. I’m amazed we have a few plants. I’m missing out on life, it’s going fast and so far I haven't done what I ought to do, or what I wanted to. You’re not the only fuck-up here.
Oh, never mind, Jack. I can’t say anymore now. Maybe I’ve said too much already. I don’t even know if I should send it. I love you, but, apparently, that's not enough.
I’ll talk to you later.
I turn off the computer.
I try to imagine how I might turn my life around. Now. Right this second. And then I’d send an email back to Jean’s computer and tell Jean that I’ve got a message for Sophie. I try to think what that message might say. I could tell her that I want to hold her. And God, I do. I want to make all the sadness in her go away. Forever. I want to make everything all right again, the way it used to be. I want to laugh with her again.
I need to make some new plans. I need to make it okay for “us” again.
How? What do I tell her? Why would she believe whatever I say? She wouldn’t. Not now. I’ve been telling her the same lies for … a long, long time. And she’s not going to believe anything I say to her until some kind of change comes over me that I can believe in myself, before I can have any hope in hell of expecting her to believe anything I tell her.
I organize my life, pay my bills, and clean the refrigerator.
I pile every old newspaper and magazine in our house, plus the 1995 World Almanac, onto our bed and pore through them voraciously, with an uncharacteristic curiosity for politics and world events.
Before I go to bed, I look for a long time at the alexandrite, deep red under the lamp by my bedside. It is blue and murky purple as I carry it to the bathroom, and a pale shade of green under the fluorescent lights. It’s extraordinary—like having my own personal aurora borealis.
I try not to think about Sophie.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1996
We sit opposite each other in the living room again.
“This means a lot to you. What’s at stake? For you?”
“I’m not sure I can tell you,” she says.
“I wish to hell you’d tell me something.” I stare back at her. “It feels to me like you have a kind of desperation about this.”
Partridge frowns. “Of course I do. Almost everybody has something they want very much to do.” She looks past me, over my shoulder. “And it’s different for each one of us.” She locks eyes with me. “I’ve been thinking about you scolding me for not warning you last time—about what might happen. Remember Dr. Hinkle?”
“Your scientist on tape.”
“Right. Remember when he talked about running into yourself?”
“Right. What about running into, oh say, Marilyn Monroe?”
Her eyes widen. “Well, I suppose if you can run into yourself, you can just as easily run into … Why do you mention her?”
“No reason. She just crossed my mind.”
“Uh-huh. Well, what I’m telling you,” she says, “is that anything is possible—just so you know. You can run into Marilyn Monroe, or Alexander the Great, I suppose. This is all theoretical, of course—or it has been. In one analysis, it falls under the heading of the many-worlds theory of quantum mechanics.”
“Parallel universes?”
“If you like.”
“And how is that useful to me?”
“I can’t predict.” She shrugs helplessly. “I only work in this field. I don’t understand it; I can’t tell you what it is, any more than Edison could have told you what electricity is.” For a nanosecond, she gazes away, looking small and lost, like some terrified child in an institution, staring off into the scattered shards of her memory. She blinks. “I’m simply trying to do the right thing, love. I’m sorry I can’t help you with … everything that’s on your mind. But you will solve whatever it is. I’m sure of it.”
She takes one of my hands in hers and squeezes it. “I want nothing more than for this to work out, not just for me—but for all of us.”
She squeezes my hand once more, looks deep into my eyes, then reaches for her ebony case.
“Why? Why do you want this so much? I’d really like to know!”
“I am”—she shakes her head—“for reasons I hope you’ll understand eventually, unable to tell you.” She sighs. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to trust me.”
I review my other choices. It doesn’t take long. There aren’t any.
12
TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 1956
I steer around the wash onto Shoemaker Drive again. I look at his hands on the wheel, aware for the first time that Richard Blake has more hair on the back of his hands and wrists than Jack Cade and that he wears a gold Bulova wristwatch.
And the alexandrite ring.
My heart flip-flops when I walk around to the back of the house and Margaret and Lily aren’t in their places beneath the mesquite tree. I hurry into the kitchen, open up Richard’s workbox, then realize I haven’t stopped to get a Dairy Queen or to harvest the quartz, or to spend however long looking at myself in the mirror, and am home earlier than I was the last time.
“Richard?” It’s Margaret.
As I close my workbox, I glance out the window. Amy Jaekel is lying on a chaise lounge on a redwood deck in her yard. She might look as if the only thing on her mind is a suntan, if she weren’t gazing, cold-eyed, directly at me.
Margaret calls my name again. I concede the staring contest to the spooky next-door neighbor and follow the sound of Margaret’s voice into the library.
Lily is in front of the television, watching cowboys chasing each other across the Republic back lot. Margaret sits at a small cherrywood table beneath a high bookcase crammed with gemology books. She is working on a gin and tonic. Her checkbook is open. She is paying bills. She holds herself stiffly as I kiss her on the cheek.
“There’s not enough money,” she says.
“I know.”
“There’s never enough money.”
“I know. I’m going to do something about that.”
“Maybe we should sell some of the furniture.”
“I’m going to take care of our money problems,” I say.
“How?”
“I’ve got some coming in the first of the month.”
“From where?” There is ridicule in the question.
I lie. “Some back payments that are due me.”
Richard remembers the previous New Year’s Eve at the home of his recent boss, Dr. H.P. Tandler, the head of the UCLA geology department. Richard poured a tumbler of Scotch and disappeared from the party in the middle of the evening. Margaret found him an hour later watching television in the Tandlers’ library. He’d already been in trouble with Dr. Tandler. Since he began the affair with Lily, his conduct at school had been erratic. But he hadn’t made his fatal mistake until he’d returned to the celebration at the New Year’s Eve party.
At midnight, when Dr. Tandler’s wife lifted her face to him for the ritual kiss, he considered it briefly, then said, “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”
He didn’t have tenure and was fired the following week.
Margaret is watching me, waiting for an explanation.
On the television, a young woman is singing, showing the world her soft and manageable hair.
Halo, everybody, Halo.
Halo is the shampoo that glorifies your hair.
So Halo, everybody, Halo.
Halo Shampoo, Halo.
One day, her granddaughter will believe in standing on mountains and howling at the moon. And she will reject that one size fits all. But she will also try to keep her “whistle-clean hair.” And it won’t be easy.
“I’m really going to try to make things work.”
There is a flicker of hope in her eyes. “Are you?”
Upstairs, I take off my jacket and quickly make an entry in Richard’s notebook about rose quartz.
I go out into the hall and check the top of the stairs to make sure Margaret isn’t on her way up, then walk back down the hall, past Lily’s room and Richard’s, to Margaret’s.
I open the door, go inside, move directly to her bedside table and open the mahogany box. Inside is a Smith & Wesson .22-caliber, five-chamber revolver. I check the safety, then, taking the gun with me, get out of the room and back to Richard’s as quickly as I can.
I put the revolver in the back of Richard’s underwear drawer and sit down on the bed. I hear a thunk from the hall, but realize it’s only a house-settling sound. It reminds me that I have to change the lock on my bedroom door.
I hear voices from below. I get up, move to one of the dormer windows, and see Margaret and Lily under the mesquite tree exactly as I remember them from my first trip back, only from a higher angle now. Margaret is in her lawn chair, Lily in the swing.
I am moving out of synch through a replay of the day I originally arrived.
I can’t hear what they’re saying, so I go downstairs to the screened-in porch, where I eavesdropped on them the last time, and do it again.
Lily is spinning in the swing again, singing:
Two old maids in a folding bed—
One turned over to the other and said—
And then, as before, she segues into:
I’ll get by, as long as I have you—
But now the dialogue changes. Lily doesn’t chide her sister for not laughing, because Margaret does laugh—a little. Then Lily giggles, and then Margaret really laughs.
With obvious warmth in her voice, she says, “Would you like me to read to you from the mystery, dear?”
“No, thank you, Margaret.” She stops spinning and puts her feet on the ground. “If I’m very careful, may I press my elegant dress by myself?”
“All right. If you’re very careful, and you tell me when you’re finished.”
“Sometimes Richard helps me. Richard’s very kind to me.”
Margaret weighs that. “I suppose he is, isn’t he?”
“Oh, yes. Richard’s very good to me. I love Richard.”
Margaret can’t keep herself from sounding off a dry response to that. “Yes, I know that.”
Lily throws her feet out and sets the swing into motion. “I love Richard because Richard is kind. And he helps me do things that are hard for me, and he’s … kind.”
Margaret is silent for a long time, then says, “I guess he tries in his way, doesn’t he?”
Lily is swinging and softly humming to herself and doesn’t answer.
13
There aren’t many restaurants near La Vieja, and Margaret doesn’t feel easy going too far from home, so we dine at Milt’s Fine Cuisine, once again on the road up to Ojai. Richard has two crusty lamb chops slathered with mint jelly. Margaret and Lily order the Tuesday Night Special, an inoffensive-looking chicken dish.
Lily watches the other customers and practices her best table manners, as Margaret has told her she always must when they eat out. Richard and Margaret talk about music, books, and politics. There is a lot of discussion in the air about rebellion, and Margaret doesn’t understand it. Richard doesn’t either, but he’s decided that he should try. Margaret finds Marlon Brando, Brigitte Bardot, Mickey Spillane, and Allen Ginsberg offensive, even though she’s never seen or read them. They agree that all of that rebellion probably has a lot to do with rock and roll, although Richard secretly suspects Margaret of liking it, and he himself admits he sort of “likes the beat.”
Margaret talks about Adlai Stevenson, who she hopes will be the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate again. Richard is glad Ike has finally spoken out about McCarthyism, calling it “McCarthywasm.” Jack has known actors, writers, and directors whose careers had been ruined by McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, but he prevents Richard from going entirely out of character and saying “self-righteous pricks.”
Toward the end of dinner, we have a lively conversation about whether UFOs really are vehicles from outer space or not. Margaret and I agree that nothing as crazy as that is possible.
But Lily stubbornly takes the other point of view. Her eyes grow large and she insists, “There are aliens all around us.”
Driving home, I realize with fascinated horror that I’m slowing down. I cringe as Margaret, animated by the wine she’s had with dinner, says, “Richard, can we go inside that place and take a look? I’d like to see it. I’d like to have a dance.”
I stop the car as if hypnotized; magnetized by the Rat Hole like a murderer returning to the scene of the crime. I whisper under my breath, barely moving my lips, “Oh my God. We want revenge.”
“Revenge for what?” says Margaret.
“I was just thinking about … Dr. Tandler. I guess I still feel a little bitter about that.”
“Well, it’s too late now.”
“I know. I know.” What I am actually thinking about is who is inside the Rat Hole with his mean little eyes and thrashing hormones. I stare out the window, thinking I’d like to kick the son of a bitch from here to …
The women are staring at me.
Jack and Richard have come to know each other a little, like a dog owner knows his dog and vice versa—although who is the owner and who is the dog, neither of us could say. And now, neither is absolutely sure which one of us has most been nursing the itch to even a score. Each curses the other’s testosterone, although to be honest, most (but not all) conclusions that Jack draws about Richard come from some unspecified lobe of he’s not sure whose brain.
“We’d have fun,” says Margaret.
Lily agrees. “Oh, yes. Let’s go in, Richard. Let’s go in the dance hall.”
I tell myself that maybe the timing is different, that Daryl may have moved on by now.
He hasn’t.
I take Margaret’s arm and Lily’s and steer them to a table up against the pale green cement-block wall. It’s as far away as I can get us from the tab
le where Daryl is seated, talking to a plain but large-breasted strawberry blonde.
Gogi Grant is singing “The Wayward Wind” on the Wurlitzer. When Margaret asks me why we can’t sit closer to the dance floor, I tell her it makes me nervous sitting in a crowd of people, and she believes me.
We’re served by a different waitress, an older woman with dyed-red hair, thick mascara, and a resentful expression augmented by full lips painted barn red. Margaret has her usual, I have a beer again, and Lily accepts a 7 Up.
Again, I dance with Margaret. When we get back to the table, she suggests with no apparent malice that I dance with Lily too.
With a laid-back smile, I say, “I really don’t think that’s a great idea, hon.”
“Why not?”
Lily rocks from one foot to the other and looks brightly around the room as we dance to Nelson Riddle and His Orchestra’s “Lisbon Antigua.”
She looks up at me, smiling sweetly.
Perspiring, I smile back.
I think of Chris Isaak’s “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing.” Jack has a new feeling in common with Richard as he holds Lily, dancing. The feeling is remorse. Not that that changes anything. “Hey listen, I feel bad that I raped you—my wife’s mentally challenged sister.”
All we can try to do now is dig up enough beginner’s humanity not to do it again.
And … yet—being close to her like this—I feel like the obsessed, spinning, mad James Stewart in Vertigo, unable to control his feelings, or even to make out for sure who this woman is. It feels as if I’m barely able to keep myself from sweeping her into my arms and spiriting her out of this place.
The music changes, calling for us to tango, which is out of the question.