by Don Lee
A week later, a warmer day, he headed south, down Highway 1, to the Bidwell Marsh Preserve. On foot, he followed a path along a creek bordered by willows and cattails and bobbing yellow catkins. Eventually the creek widened into an estuary, where he spotted a great blue heron and several snowy egrets. Song-fowl. Wippling wing. A little ways onward, there was a meadow of louched low grass, sunsplurged with wildflowers. He crested the sand dunes and trekked down to an area of rocky shale reefs and explored the water-wattled tide pools. Breathing in the beach wrack, he watched a sea otter on its back in the golden green kelp beds and the fawn-froth of the incoming surf. He tried to meditate. He tried to observe the motions of his soul. He felt nothing.
On moonless nights, he drove along Skyview Ridge Road, following the contours of the hills until he was at a remove from any houses or streetlights, and goggled the stars, those circle-citadels, shining from shook foil, the fire-folk in the air, airy abeles set on a flare. He tried to quiet his mind and invoke awe. He wanted to be shaken alive with God’s majesty, with the mystery and beauty of this world, with its infiniteness.
“Nothing’s happening,” he told Caroline at the library.
“It could be that nothing will ever happen,” she said. “Or maybe you’re just trying too hard. You can’t force it or manufacture it. Even Hopkins struggled at times. Near the end of his life, he wrote six poems that came to be known as the Terrible Sonnets, or the Sonnets of Desolation. He agonized he’d failed as both a priest and a poet. He felt distant from God all of a sudden. He didn’t have that direct colloquy with Him anymore, and he blamed himself for that failure—indulging in self-pity and ego. So you see, it’s not a simple trajectory, a neat little upward path without dips and deviations.”
The following Saturday, Yadin took to the redwood trails. The path was covered with damp, spongy topsoil, everything vibrantly green after the winter rains, the creeks rushing with runoff. He climbed into groves of live oaks and old-growth redwoods, many of them over three hundred feet tall. In the thicket and thorp, he sensed mischief, mirth, insects and little animals scampering about, peeking boo—the diamond delves, the elves’-eyes. Flitting overhead were thrushes and warblers, woodpeckers and western tanagers, their trickle of song-strain wringing through the echoing timber. Weedio-weedio!
He sat down and leaned against a redwood and, after several minutes, began to pray. Dear God, I want to feel closer to you. I want to feel your grace. I want there to be a purpose and meaning to this life. I want to feel connected to you and be worthy of your companionship and mercy. Please, God, give me consolation. He heard nothing in response, felt nothing. He wondered if he was doing something incorrectly—maybe he sounded too self-serving with all those wants—or, worse, if he was somehow ineligible for God’s grace or even His acknowledgment.
He kept trying, going on excursions into the woods, on walks on beaches, on hikes in the hills, hoping to see what Hopkins saw, and one early morning he even crept into Our Lady of the Pillar, the Catholic church downtown, genuflecting and crossing himself as he entered, lurking in the rear pews as Mass was being held. Yet he kept failing. Weeks passed. Lent ended, Easter came and went. It was nearing the end of April. And still, whenever he opened his spiral-bound notebook to write down what he was experiencing, he had nothing to say.
The Sunday before Memorial Day, May 29, Yadin saw Jeanette, as always, before the service for choir rehearsal. Darnell had them go through two hymns from Singing the Living Tradition, and also a third song that Stephanie Weiler, this week’s lay leader, had chosen: Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water.”
There weren’t many people in the sanctuary for the worship, less than twenty members, which was typical when Franklin was not preaching. Caroline and their three children usually traveled with him to the UU fellowship in Aptos on these alternate Sundays, but surprisingly they were here this morning.
The congregation moved briskly through the service, and Stephanie, nervous as she was, gave a funny and ultimately moving speech about how her dog, who’d died last month, had taught her to be a better UU.
After coffee hour, Yadin and Jeanette set off on their usual post-church run to Costco, Yadin driving them in his van, the engine straining as they climbed up Highway 71 toward San Vicente.
“How come Caroline and the kids didn’t go to Aptos today?” Jeanette asked him.
“Someone said something about Peyton coming down with a cold.”
“He looked fine to me.”
“Maybe it was a migraine?” Yadin said. “I didn’t catch the particulars.”
“You didn’t talk to Caroline?”
“No.” It had been a month since he’d last solicited Caroline’s help. His spiritual quest had taken a strange turn in late April—a metaphysical detour that didn’t have much to do with Hopkins or even, perhaps, religion, yet had conveyed him to the new songs.
“I saw you at the food table together,” Jeanette said.
“I said hello, that’s all.”
Caroline had been smearing strawberry jam onto a bagel half at the table, and her youngest child, Rebecca, had run up to her and asked for a bite. Caroline had feigned irritation, then said maybe she’d allow her a nibble. Yadin had watched as she slowly lowered the bagel, moved it toward Rebecca’s mouth, then thrust it forward as if she were going to cram it into her daughter’s face. Rebecca jumped back and giggled, as did Caroline—identical heh-heh-heh’s.
The hill was steepening, and Yadin pressed down harder on the accelerator, which seemed to have no appreciable effect.
“Is something going on between you two?” Jeanette asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you having an affair with Caroline?” Jeanette asked.
“What?” He thought for sure he had misheard her.
“Are you in love with her?”
“With Caroline?” Yadin asked. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Do you see her outside church or the library?”
“No, of course not,” Yadin said.
“But you’re attracted to her.”
He was, a little, but his attraction was purely reflexive, and he knew not to admit it to Jeanette. “She used to get annoyed with all my questions about Hopkins. That was the biggest feature of our . . . conversations.” He had almost blundered and said relationship. “I annoyed her.”
“That’s not an answer. Are you or are you not in love with Caroline?” she asked.
“Jeanette, I am not in love with Caroline. We are not having an affair. There is nothing going on between us. I am not attracted to her. Okay?”
She stared through the van’s windshield. “Okay,” she said.
She didn’t say anything more the rest of the drive. At Costco, they split off with separate carts, Yadin going to the organic section. The place was more crowded than usual—people gathering supplies for Memorial Day barbecues, presumably. Not long ago, the bustle and bright lighting in a box store like this would have triggered a Ménière’s episode in him. Supermarkets, even small ones, had always scared Yadin, and he had preferred doing all of his food shopping at 7-Elevens. Being able to weather Costco on a weekly basis represented significant progress. Yet today Yadin felt agitated as he navigated the aisles. Did Jeanette really think he could be having an affair with Caroline? Where had she gotten that idea?
It made him all the more apprehensive to confess what he’d actually been concealing from her—that instead of building an emergency fund and getting ahead on his mortgage payments, he had replaced his musical gear and intended to go seven to ten grand in debt for a self-released album that would, in all likelihood, never break even. He hadn’t mentioned anything to her about seeing the credit counselor at CCHP. He’d said he was taking the afternoon off to get his teeth cleaned at a community dental clinic.
Truth be told, he was just as worried about how she would respond to his spiritual journey these past few months—the full extent of it, reading the Bible, buying a ros
ary. For Jeanette’s sake, he was willing to stay on at the First Unitarian Universalist Church, but he was thinking of getting baptized.
They chanced upon each other in the produce section, and Yadin girded himself for Jeanette to ask him more questions, make further accusations.
Instead, she looked down at the case of mineral water on the bottom rack of his grocery cart and said, “I heard there’s a machine to make your own sparkling water. Maybe for your birthday?”
On the drive back to Rosarita Bay, she was in a softened mood, preoccupied now with his van, which was making even more of a racket struggling up the hill.
“That doesn’t sound strange to you?” she asked.
“It always makes funny noises,” he said. “It’s old.”
She crossed her legs and inadvertently shifted the worn floor mat with her foot. “You know you’ve got a hole in your floor? I can see the road.”
He glanced over at the quarter-sized rupture in the rusted-out floor. Jeanette opened the passenger-side window and said something.
“What?” he asked.
She rolled the window back up halfway. “You’re never going to pass your next inspection,” she told him. “The exhaust’s coming in through the floor. Something’s loose or cracked under there.”
The white cargo van was a 1997 Ford Econoline E350 with over 169,000 miles.
“You need to get it checked out,” Jeanette said. “It’s not safe.”
Yadin ran through the repair costs for possible problems, none of which he could afford right now: the muffler, a bad gasket, the catalytic converter—he wasn’t sure what else could be going awry.
He didn’t know as much about automobiles as he should have. Every summer, his father would make Yadin and Davey go out to the driveway and rotate all four tires on his car and check the air pressure. Their father thought this would be good practice for them, a useful thing for a man to know. But it was a grueling undertaking for little boys, jacking up the car and torquing the crowbar and lifting the tires on and off. Lug nuts would be stuck, the crowbar would slip off, knuckles would crater-bleed. Worse, they had to take turns and do the job alone, one by one. Yadin always volunteered to go first so he could leave the lug nuts loosened for his brother.
The traffic slowed ahead of them, and they edged up to a Mercedes-Benz SUV. There was a sticker on its back bumper that read ROT IN HELL, OSAMA BIN LADEN. FROM AMERICA WITH LOVE. The Navy SEALs had killed bin Laden less than a month ago.
“We have a guest who has a new Mercedes-Benz, a convertible,” Jeanette said. “I heard the valets have been washing and waxing it every day. She’s been tipping really well. Everyone’s falling over their feet for her. She’s a celebrity. Or a former celebrity.”
“Anyone I would know?” Yadin asked.
“I’m not supposed to say.”
“You’d have to kill me first,” he said. She smiled at this, which reassured him that she had tabled their earlier argument.
“All right, it’s Mallory Wicks,” Jeanette said. “Have you ever heard of her?”
Internally, Yadin halted, hearing the name. “Mallory Wicks?” he asked. “Mallory Wicks is at the Centurion?”
Long ago, in Raleigh, North Carolina, when they were in their early twenties, Yadin and Mallory had formed a band called Whisper Creek with a few friends, although often it had been just the two of them as a duo, Yadin on guitar, Mallory on fiddle, sharing the vocals. They had been lovers and bandmates for a year, and it had ended badly—his doing, his fault. They never spoke to each other again. Mallory absconded to Nashville and cracked the Country Top 40 with her first single, “Beds & Beer,” and had kept going from there, all the way to Hollywood.
“I didn’t think you’d know who she was,” Jeanette said. “Or care.”
It was impossible to fathom. “When’d she get to the hotel?” Yadin asked.
“Wednesday,” Jeanette said. “She has the Miramar Suite. She got both the Spa and the Stay & Play packages—she’s a golfer, wouldn’t you know.”
“Did you get assigned her room?”
“No. Clarisa, one of the floor supervisors, did.”
He had never, not for a minute, ever imagined that Mallory might visit Rosarita Bay. “How long is she staying?” he asked.
“I think she’s checking out tomorrow,” Jeanette said. “Why?”
6. I Saw Her in the Corners 4:21
He took a shower, then inspected his face in the bathroom mirror. This was something Yadin used to despise—having to look at his face—and he still tended to avoid it, though there was no longer any reason to.
From the time he turned thirteen, he began having acne. Every morning, he’d awake to find new horrors on his face, red papules forming, whiteheads flowering. He’d pop the pimples with his fingers, squeeze until not only the pus but also the blood was expelled, kneading until the blood stopped flowing and had turned into a watery fluid. Then he’d fold up tiny squares of toilet paper and dab the centers against the ruptured pimples, trying to get the toilet-paper squares to stick on them (occasionally Scotch tape was required) and blot up vestigial fluid. He’d let them dry for thirty minutes to an hour, whereupon he would peel the squares off slowly and carefully. If all went well, the pimples would be flat and no longer open and oozing. The skin flaps would be beginning to bond together, and there wouldn’t be too much surrounding redness. The timing was critical. If he popped a pimple too soon, the pus would not entirely burst out, and the whitehead would re-form. If he waited too long, the pus would turn rancid and yellow and harden and leave a hole in his skin after it was hollowed out. If he wasn’t meticulous enough with the toilet-paper squares, there’d be a scab, which might break open inadvertently or spontaneously (just yawning could do it), and he’d have a seep of blood trickling down his face. Frequently, he would stay home from school rather than risk humiliation.
He tried applying various home remedies to his pimples: baking soda, toothpaste, oatmeal. He bought special creams and cleansers. He subscribed to an expensive mail-order treatment kit. He pleaded with his mother to take him to a dermatologist, and finally got a prescription for antibiotics. Nothing worked. His face remained greasy, as if his pores were secreting cooking oil, and the zits appeared unabated. And then, he didn’t think it possible, but his acne worsened exponentially. He began developing cysts.
They were hard, painful bumps, embedded deep within the epidermis. They’d incubate for days, becoming larger and more inflamed. He would feel his face with his fingers, praying for them to go away, praying not to find any new cysts. Once in a while, he could stave them off by wrap ping an ice cube in a paper towel and pressing it against the nodule, twenty minutes at a time. More often than not, though, it’d keep growing and swell into a massive pus-filled lesion.
He would have to perform surgery. He would sterilize a sewing needle with a lighter and lodge it into the cyst until it pierced the underlying abscess. Then he would pinch and squash and mash it between his fingers, and if he was lucky, the whole thing would explode out, squirting the viscous white pus against the mirror, and there would be just a small dot on his skin where the needle had been inserted. It never went that well. He nearly always had to lance it again, leaving a huge boil, residual scab, and leprous crater.
Besides on his face, he got cysts on his forehead, neck, and back. Worst was when they bloomed on his nose. The bulges could not be concealed, even with pancake makeup. Occasionally he would affix band-aids and lie that he had walked into a tree branch or collided against the corner of a cupboard door. Sometimes the band-aids would be justified. The hard knobs and ridges on his cheeks and chin made it impossible for him to shave without slicing himself. (His beard came out thin and scraggly, and it would be years before he could grow out a full one.) And the scars—they were awful. After each cyst or pimple was excised, it might heal, yet it would add to the other discolorations, indentations, pockmarks, and furrows on his face, riddling his skin with cavities and whorls and trails. Thro
ughout his teens, he spent every waking moment agonizing over his face, invent ing reasons for why he was hiding in his bedroom, wishing his cysts would somehow disappear.
Not much of his acne was in evidence anymore, a change that still seemed miraculous to him. To this day, he could not get used to having clear skin, although he had been free of blemishes since his late twenties. He was always afraid the cysts and pimples would reappear, much like he fretted about a recurrence of Ménière’s attacks, and he continued to view himself as an unattractive person, although Jeanette claimed the contrary. It was all in his head, she said; everyone, including her, thought he was perfectly nice-looking.
This morning, he shaved without mishap and dressed in his Sunday khaki pants and white button-down shirt, garnishing the ensemble with an old striped rep tie he’d once picked up at a Salvation Army store. He was supposed to go with Jeanette and Joe to the big Memorial Day observance at the national cemetery in San Bruno. He had asked Joe what he should wear, what Joe himself would be wearing, and he had said a suit. Yadin didn’t have a suit. This was the best he could do.
Out on the street, he turned the ignition to his van, and there was an alarming clatter, but it seemed drivable, certainly capable of reaching town, less than three miles from his house. He headed north on Highway 1, and several minutes later passed by the Centurion Resort on his left, then the employee parking lot on his right. He still couldn’t believe that Mallory was at the hotel. He had told Jeanette, when she’d asked why he wanted to know how long Mallory would be there, that he was merely curious, but of course there was more to it than that. It had been all he could think about throughout the night, unable to sleep, brooding about it.
He had been tracking Mallory’s career from its very start. For a while, she had been everywhere: three albums in five years, arena tours, then a major role on the prime-time drama City Empire, followed by several TV movies and a miniseries. He viewed every episode. He saw every music video. He read everything he could find about her in supermarket tabloids and in People and Us. He had stacks of old magazines in his bedroom closet—anything with a photo of her, a little mention. He had watched countless celebrity gossip shows, just in the hopes of hearing something new about Mallory. Now she was right there, a few hundred yards away. She had already been in town for four days, and she would be leaving any moment, and once she departed, he would never have another chance to see her.