"What's wrong? Is it the kids?"
"Nothing's wrong. I think things are right. I'm sorry to call this late, but I had to tell you."
Noel covered the receiver with his hand, and Peri listened to the scratch of his voice, the intense whisper of someone hoping not to be heard. He wasn't alone. Peri closed her eyes, swallowed down the joy in her throat, trying to take in the possibility that at this minute, both she and her brother were happy.
"Sorry. What's going on?"
"Graham called. Now wait! It's not bad, at least not for me. He's withdrawing his petition for custody. Garnet's filing. They're going to be able to stay here."
"He what?"
"He changed his mind. He's going to let Garnet have them for the year, and then--they'll probably come back to me."
"Oh, Periwinkle."
To be honest, Peri hadn't known for years what an actual periwinkle looked like. Without asking her father who knew the regular and fancy name for every plant, she decided it was a purple flower, purple for the p that began the word, purple for the royalty in a special name, the one her brother and mother and, sometimes, her father called her, their hearts tender for her, the name making her tender for them, her family. Later, she discovered the flower she'd picked in the back yard as a child, the blue and white star-shaped flowers tucked deep inside green leaf clusters, weren't simply the "sweet" flower, the name she and Noel had given them after learning there was nectar at the base of the flower. They were periwinkles. “Vinca,” her dad had said. “Periwinkle, too. Why didn’t you ask?”
Back when they were little, she and Noel would sit in the shade of the yard and pick the flowers, sucking out all their juice, throwing the flowers behind them when they were finished. That's how she'd felt for years, sucked out and discarded, but now, she was the undiscovered flower, the one hiding in her leaves, full of nectar no one had touched, a happy future she could almost believe in.
"I know. I can't believe it."
"That coward. He's such a coward, Peri. Why would he do that?"
She was about to agree, but then prickled defensively. There it was, her old habit of covering up for everyone and making everything look all right. Maybe now, though, Graham was actually being brave by admitting he wasn't good enough for his children. "I don't know. I just know it might be fine. It might turn out okay."
There was more rustling, and Noel paused, the shape of his silence round and full of expectation.
"Who's there?" she asked.
He sighed. "How could you tell?"
"You weren't as organized as usual. Things were falling. There's noise. I'm not used to hearing that."
"This probably isn't the best time to talk about it."
"You deserve somebody, Noel. You deserve everything you want, and I want to know. I want to be a part of your life."
“You have so much on your plate, Peri."
She brushed back her bangs and sighed. "I know, I know. But I need to be there for you, too. Like you've always been there for me, Noel. Even when we were kids. Even before anything happened. Before Brooke. So tell me."
"It's someone I met recently."
"What's her name?" she said.
"You know her."
"I do?"
"You remember Susan."
Peri bit her lip, thinking back through the first names of Noel’s girlfriends, the ones she’d chanced to meet. Yes, Susan was a couple of summers ago, dark and tall, smiles for the kids. For Brooke. There was a picnic, a visit in Susan’s car, a convertible Volvo, the story of a swift breakup. “Oh. From that summer. How did you reconnect?”
“I don’t know. I was sitting in that courtroom, and I kept wishing for someone to look at. Someone to turn to when the lawyers started in. And I guess I was wishing for Susan. So I called her.”
Peri smiled. "So did you have to promise you were a changed man?"
He was silent, and Peri realized that of course he had to tell her he changed because he had. They all had, these last weeks stripping off the past to find some luster beneath.
“Yeah, but I hope she believe me. This time.”
"Where is she now?"
"In the bathroom."
"So . . . this time? Is it going to work?"
“Maybe. She knows about me, you, us. Everything. All of it.”
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,” she said, not wanting to think he’d never had a committed relationship because of their family, the way they all left when they were needed the most.
"Don’t be. It’s not your fault. Look. I'll come over after work. We can talk about it--about everything--later."
"All right. Noel?"
"What?"
"I love you."
"I love you too, Peri." She hung up, and she sat in her bed. She didn't really know Noel or Graham, two men she'd loved and needed so deeply.
Putting the phone down, she got out of bed and walked into the living room, the streetlight sending yellow streaks through the blinds. Peri sat on the couch, looking out toward the bottlebrush tree and then the street, the night a distant unknown planet, no one moving, no cars, the air still and light. This is what her life would be then, a moving into what she didn't know, everything a mystery, her own body different, changed, made whole by chemicals and talking and love. She'd never live her life the way she had--not only because it was impossible, but because she didn't want it any more. At last. She didn't want the Monte Veda house or Graham or the old patterns of doing everything and feeling nothing. She'd be a mom again, her children a couple miles away, and she'd move into it slowly, as if adapting to a new atmosphere. She'd live with her father and learn to love him in another way, not like she had before, desperate and clinging and full of despair. Closing her eyes against the night, Peri breathed in, holding the night scene in her mind. From this point on, anything might happen.
TWENTY-TWO
Carl hadn't been able to stand it, his legs twitching, his face full of imaginary welts that he couldn't stop scratching. He and Noel sat next to each other at Peri's sentencing hearing, and from the moment he'd sat down, Carl shifted and jerked as if he'd been attacked by fire ants that traveled his whole body, biting and stinging, his heart rate racing at his imagined demise. Noel nudged him once, twice, and then Carl patted Noel's leg and slid out the aisle, almost running to the courtroom door, pushing out into the hallway. Air. He leaned over, his hands on his thighs, and took in breaths as if he'd just had a long rally, the tennis ball going back and forth and back and forth, Ralph finally hitting it into the net.
"Carl? Carl? Are you okay?"
Wiping his forehead, he stood up and saw Rosie Candelero in front of him. He nodded and breathed out, taking in a smaller breath and then a smaller one, trying to stop the room from spinning. As he took in air, she jabbed a hand in her purse, and she pulled out a crumbled paper bag, smoothed it a couple of times and then shook it open. "Here. Breathe into this."
Grabbing the bag by its neck, he pulled it to his face, breathing in slowly, his head beginning to clear, the pin sticks all over his face disappearing under Rosie's calm gaze.
"What's going on in there?" she asked finally, leading him to a bench. He breathed once more from the stale bag, and then handed it back to her. She balled it up and tossed it into the trash, laughing. "At least I've cleared one thing out of this messy bag. So . . . what's happening?"
"Absolutely flipping nothing. We are just waiting and waiting." He gave her a half-smile and then ran his hand over his head, smoothing down his hair. People in leather shoes clop, clopped across the floor, and for an instant, Carl found himself waiting in another hallway, with another nurse thirty-eight years ago as Janice labored with Peri. He'd had the same light feeling, the same stupefied amazement that other people could be walking down the hall, going on with their lives, while his seemed to pivot on the edge of tragedy and disaster and joy, all at the same time.
"Sit here for a minute. Let me go look." Leaving her purse on the bench, Rosie stood up and walked to the
door, cracking it slightly, and peering in. Carl watched her, again impressed by the way she could take in what no one else wanted to, a disabled child, a crazy daughter, a court room drama. It couldn't have been simply her nurse's training that taught her to keep her eyes open and move toward the people who needed her. That was who she was, all the time, always Rosie.
"I've got to say, Carl, things look good in there. There's an awful lot of nodding going on." Rosie sat back down and patted his knee, just as he had patted Noel's.
"Good. I can't take one more thing, I think. If Peri has to go back to jail, I think it will kill the kids. Carly barely handled going there the once. And if there's more? I don't know what we'll do."
"Oh, Carl. You'll do what you've always done. Be the dad, pull your kids out of trouble."
"But I haven't always done that. For a long time, I was out of the picture. They couldn’t have cared less about me, and I let it stay that way because . . . well, because it was easier. Hell, I could go on with my fine life, say I had two great kids, and then play tennis the entire weekend."
Rosie sighed. "We screw up. No doubt. But then if we're lucky, we get a chance to make it up. Instant karma. It's like a gift, even though it looks like crap. With me and my boy? I tell you, I'm making up for first marrying my husband and giving him to my son as a father, and then divorcing him and taking him away. It's a Catch 22. But you do your best."
Carl nodded, relaxing, leaning against the wall, his breath steady. "You're right. I know I shouldn't wish for things, but she needs a break. This lawyer Preston seems okay to me now. So maybe it'll work out."
"How's Brooke?" Rosie asked after a pause.
"You wouldn't believe it. She's like a lawn gone brown finally watered and fertilized. Even her speech is better. For all her holier-than-though, Queen-of-the-universe act, Garnet has been great for Brooke. For all the kids. And believe you me, I never thought I'd say those words aloud."
And as he smiled at Rosie and she smiled back, the comfort between them spreading into the warm air, the courtroom doors opened, and there was Peri and Noel and that Preston fellow, arm in arm, all smiling, and Rosie reached out her hand and squeezed his. Later, as he was hugging his children and shaking Preston's hand, he turned back to wave Rosie over, but she was gone. The only thing she'd left behind was the warm spot she'd pressed on his hand.
After the hearing, Noel and Preston went back to Preston's office to hammer out the details of Peri's next year, and Carl took Peri to her appointment with Dr. Kolakowski, dropping her off at the front of the College Avenue building, watching her walk down the slated hallway. For a few minutes, he stared at his watch and then the steering wheel and then found himself driving the Corvair down College Avenue, turning onto Broadway, and then taking a left on Pleasant Valley Boulevard before he realized where he was going. Actually, he was surprised he even knew where to go because he'd not gone to the interment, barely staying for the reception in the church hall after the service. He'd told the kids he had a meeting to get to, but truthfully, he'd been scared to stay in a room full of Janice's friends, the women who knew the stories of his life, the way he'd been as a husband and a father and a man. And probably, he would have ended up seeing one or two of the women he'd slept with during his marriage and on the day of Janice's funeral, that didn't seem kind. After all this time, he thought that day, I'm developing a conscience.
So it was by feel and memory and partial description from the man inside the visitor's building that he made it to Janice's grave, the tombstone a simple, Janice Lynn Randall, 1937-1997, Beloved Mother and Grandmother. He'd never said goodbye, and he didn't mean at her deathbed. Carl never explained himself to her, not one bit, leaving without the courtesy of telling her it wasn't her fault. All those years, he'd let her think what she wanted, blaming him or herself or the world. But he'd never been brave enough until now, when it was too late, to face her.
He leaned against a crypt and then backed away from it, realizing what he was doing. It was so weird to build yourself a little fortress after death. Like anything could protect you in the ground, your bones turning to powder. He looked around and the fields of stones and markers and family crypts, seeing for the first time as he stood almost on top of his dead wife, that this was another way people could stay together. Maybe his desire to be cremated and thrown into the ocean was another way for him to separate, to leave nothing behind for anyone.
Carl crossed his arms and shifted on his feet, finally sitting on the ground just beside Janice's plot, smoothing the grass--a thick Bermuda--with his hand, the one Rosie had touched.
"Our girl," he began. "Our girl is going to be okay. Like she used to be. Or not like she used to be. What she might have been if things had been different. If I hadn't messed up royally, Janice. I know you'd never have let it get this bad, but I'm really trying now. She's going to be with me for a year, while she gets better. And Garnet has Carly, Ryan, and Brooke. All of them. I know. Unbelievable. But she's been great. Not at first, but now."
Folding his knees and circling them with his arms, he looked around the cemetery, the plot on top of a hill, the view of Oakland and San Francisco before him. The sun hung over South San Francisco, beginning its fall into the Pacific Ocean. By the time it rose again, Carl and Peri would be one day into their new lives, a year of starting over. Like Rosie said. Instant karma.
"I'm sorry, Janice. That's what I came to say. I'm sorry about what I did. I’m sorry I wasn't a good husband. And it's too late for us. For you. But I promise I’m going to make it okay for Peri. And Noel."
He stood up slowly, his knee clicking as he rose. "I’m going now. I probably won't be back. But I thought I'd tell you what was happening. I thought I'd tell you about the kids. If something happens, I'll let you know. But this time, you can trust me."
He wished he'd brought a flower or a plant or something, looking briefly over at other graves carefully adorned with potted azaleas and chrysanthemums, but he shrugged and turned away, walking down the cemetery slope, careful to notice the time, not wanting to let Peri wait one minute.
“How was your appointment today?” her father asked, his eyes on the road.
“Good.”
“Oh? How so?”
Peri felt the words she would use to explain form in her throat, words like understanding and sorrow and forgiveness, but then she stopped. He cared again, or maybe he cared for the first time. Not since she was small and listened to him do crossword puzzles had she felt this—attention, his concern, his one hundred percent awareness of her. Like she was a person. Not his child. Not his crazy child. His daughter, a woman, part of his life. Had he ever asked these kinds of questions to her mother? Did he come home from work and say, “Honey, how was your day? What happened?” Peri didn’t know. She couldn’t remember those hours at the kitchen counter, except in her myopic way. Her need for him had blotted out everything else.
But that was over, too, just like her life with Graham, her life with her children in the apartment, her fear that she was rotten, poison, explosive. There was nothing more than this for the next year, her father and her, her children, her health. People were helping her now, cared, even Graham in his own way. Her family had saved her, after all. She turned to Carl, wishing that her mother could see him now, a hero despite everything.
“We talk about the whole thing,” she said finally. “Dr. Kolakowski helps me with it all.”
“That’s great, honey. I’m—I’m so happy.” He adjusted his hat and wiped his nose, and Peri sat back deep in the Corvair’s old leather, the wind all around and in her. For this second, she was not scared, even though the future was unclear, like the view of San Francisco from her father’s house on a foggy day, nothing but the tops of buildings and bridges visible in the swirls of white air, everything else only shapes she could imagine.
When You Go Away - 192 - Jessica Barksdale Inclan
lan, When You Go Away
When You Go Away Page 23