by Liza Nelson
And always, Darling would be awake, watching. As I sat on the toilet, unable to hold back another second, I’d stare into his yellowy eyes until, invariably, he’d lay his head on his paws with a bored yawn and fall asleep. I’d lower the lid without flushing and tiptoe back to our room, vowing never to admit I was the one if anyone complained the next morning.
It was the loneliest I have ever been in my life. Until now. No, I am not lonely. You are out there. In Eden or somewhere like it. I know you are. You have to be.
That night at the lock-in, all I could think about was your face purposely hidden from me. And for how long? What I felt about Godiva went way beyond anger. Dry ice, frozen fire. The evening passed in a blur. Basketball game, pizzas, treasure hunt, circle of prayer. I let Jimmy Cryder make out with me during the movie. I had never made out with anyone before. After we’d kissed awhile, he pulled out a little bottle of what looked like cold medicine.
“Brandy from my dad’s office cabinet. He keeps it locked, but I know where he keeps the key.” I pretended to take the swallow he offered. I hate the taste of liquor. “My dad says he sold your mom the house you live in. He says it’s a pretty strange place. He thought your mom was crazy when she bought it.”
Usually, hearing someone say something like that would trigger all kinds of defensive loyalty from me, but not that night, not anymore. I just let him keep kissing me to keep him quiet.
Near dawn I woke in a chilled daze. I tried to curl back into the flannel warmth of my sleeping bag, but sleep would not come. Leaning up on an elbow, I breathed in the closeness of too many people sharing air in a closed space. Stale and sour, yet faintly sweet, a flicker of deja vu.
Somewhere nearby Jimmy was asleep, and Cass. No, Cass never showed up after all, but Suzanne and Mickey Searcy, and the Baxter boys were all there. For so long I had positively ached for their acceptance. I could name every occupant zippered into the sleeping bags scattered across the Fellowship Hall, the boys’ side and the girls’. Someone sighed, someone else snored, several coughed. Turning slowly this way and that, like so many caterpillars weaving themselves into new beings for the day to come, they knew nothing of gray darkness that muffled shape and sound, nothing of chill or dull, achy tiredness shot through with wiry threads of anticipation.
I had been, what, four years old, the one time someone directly addressed me as “bastard.” Not as a curse but as a simple descriptive fact. I was sitting in a sandbox three backyards down from Gram’s with a child named Melissa Pafford. Her mother had gone to high school with Godiva and told me over milk and graham crackers that she’d always admired “your mommy’s artistic ability.”
Lissa, with her curly dark hair and green eyes, was bossy the way admired children are, and I admired her greatly. We were shaping wet sand into a castle when she announced in her scratchy voice, “Dylan, you’re a bastard.”
I put down my plastic spoon and watched Lissa pour a torrent of dry sand from one cup to another. Then Lissa stood up and brushed the sand off her knees, out of the folds in her pink skirt. The colors remain strangely vivid still, the yellow spoon, the pink skirt, the sky eggshell blue.
“I’m sick of this sandbox,” Melissa Pafford said and stepped daintily out and onto the gravel path toward the sliding board.
I had never heard the word “bastard” before, had no exact idea of its meaning, but I knew, the way you always know an unwanted truth when you hear it. Melissa Pafford had described an actual state of being, had labeled the vague but undeniable difference already present between me and everyone else.
“All it means is that I never married the man who is your father,” Godiva explained that night as she tucked me into the canopied bed she’d slept in when she was a child. “But I’ve already told you that, just not named it.” Then she told the story once more, how the day I was born, all of Godiva’s friends brought oranges and chocolate to the hospital and scattered gold sprinkles as a kind of baptism into the spirit of creative life.
Gold sprinkles.
When Godiva drove us through Washington, D.C., on our way to Florida, we sat across the street from a Catholic church to eat lunch, White Castle burgers for me, fruit and cheese for Godiva. The front was massive, gray stone with deeply glowing stained-glass windows, ruby and emerald and gold. Nothing like First Baptist, that’s for sure. Looking up at the stained-glass angels over the church’s front door as she peeled her orange, Godiva described a night she had spent in there once long ago.
“Before I was born?”
“Yes, Noodle, before you were born. Everyone else slept in the sanctuary, in the pews themselves, but those glorious windows would have kept me awake, all that fire and ice within each pane had to glow even in the blackest night.
“So I went looking and I found a windowless cubicle. I woke up surrounded by a circle of nodding priests. It freaked me out. Then I blinked and saw they were only choir gowns draped over hangers. But for half a second, I thought maybe I’d become a saint or something.”
At the time I was spellbound. It sounded like Godiva’s personal ghost story, her version of Rip Van Winkle or the Headless Horseman. But remembering back as I lay wrapped in Godiva’s sleeping bag on the floor of First Baptist, a possibility took shape that my heart and soul raced to embrace.
I could see you, can still see you, waking, rubbing your eyes, smoothing the black hair matted above your ear, stretching the stiffness from a night on the floor out of legs and shoulders, casting a glance at the redheaded young woman beside you, your mind crackling alert, your every nerve alive to the risks and potential everywhere around you. And I am there, too, unborn but there in your pores and your eyes and your brain, smelling your smell, hearing your pulse tap out Do not forget me, waiting for the chance, waiting to be given life. My turn, shouting through your lungs, through your heart, through your fingernails. My turn.
That’s when this all started. I knew what I had to do. I had to find you. First, though, I had to figure out how to find you and without anyone, Godiva especially, getting suspicious. I didn’t know where to begin, but considering how resourceful you’ve been all these years, I figured I must have some resourcefulness in my genes. I just had to call it up. If I was going to find you I had to do some research.
Nine
GRASSLY MUNICIPAL LIBRARY WAS ERECTED IN 1837 AS A FAMILY HOME BY THE GRASSLY FAMILY WHOSE LAST HEIR, CLEVELAND AGENCY GRASSLY, DONATED HIS ELEGANT BIRTHPLACE TO THE ESMERALDA FREE LIBRARY COMMITTEE IN 1933, AN ACT OF GRAND GENEROSITY.
I READ THAT PLAQUE the first Monday after the lock-in. Afterward I was glad that Mr. Grassly forgot to leave any kind of endowment for upkeep. As dark, dank and hard to get around in as it must have been when Mr. Grassly removed his last elderly aunt to the nursing home, his old house is everything a library should not be. That’s why I loved it. I loved the green odor of the books slowly molding in disuse and the warrens of high-ceilinged rooms lined and partitioned by unsteady shelves. I loved particularly the other patrons, I guess you’d call them, though I preferred to think of them as guests: a scattering of old men who nodded over their copies of Sports Illustrated and Life. The two librarians, interchangeable in their identical beige skirts and cardigan sweaters, paid no attention to what went on beyond the Circulation Desk until 5:05 when they shooed the old men out. The cashiers at Winn-Dixie were more interested in the vegetables they rang up, especially if Godiva was buying one of her mangoes, than those librarians were in the books they stamped with the old blotter. I could read or check out whatever I wanted without a question asked.
On my first visit, that Monday after the lock-in, I wasn’t quite sure how to begin. For half an hour I wandered around the American History section, trailing my eyes along the dusty spines, hoping some Geiger counter would go off when I saw what I needed. Then I riffled through yellowed index cards in the subject catalogue. No computers in this library, thank you, though there was an old but reliable copier I fed all my change to. Under “Crimes and Criminals” I dis
covered a book written in 1973 by an FBI informer, A Life on the Run: Three Years with the Weather Underground. You can imagine my excitement. My future clicked into place, not only how to proceed, but what exactly I was looking for. Even in Esmeralda, the library’s Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature was a rich mine. I began to hang out at the library after school as many afternoons a week as I could.
I thought of little else but said nothing to anyone, and on the surface at least, nothing much changed. If anything, Godiva and I started getting along better. All the small irritations and embarrassments she had been causing me now seemed irrelevant, of juvenile concern. I wasn’t going to let my anger at my mother, immeasurable as it was, get in the way of finding you.
One afternoon late in October, I was thumbing through one of the library’s picture books on nature—I did that sometimes to relax from the intensity of the research—when I turned a page and there was a series of time-release photographs of a molting snake. I felt such a rush of recognition I couldn’t believe it. That snake was me, the same and different, growing new insides under old skin. Me, and you, too. A symbol for us both. A bond.
Godiva never asked why I taped pictures of a snake on my bedroom mirror. She was probably too relieved that I’d lost interest in being born-again to notice anything else. After Mrs. Brasleton called to ask Godiva, politely, why I had stopped attending services and choir practice, Godiva was full of gloating indignation.
“She kept asking about a crisis in the home, as if I had locked you in a tower until you promised never to attend church again or something. A crisis in your home life, can you believe it?” Godiva could mimic Mrs. Brasleton perfectly, I’ll give her that, the way she drops her voice and smiles at the edges when she has something unpleasant to say.
“I told her I was disappointed myself since, actually, I’d been looking forward to visiting the Church again to hear you sing.” Godiva leaned over to brush my bangs out of my eyes. Why did she always do that? “Which is true, by the way.”
Godiva had come to First Baptist exactly one time. She’d attempted, in her fashion, to blend in, but I heard the rustle as the worshipers’ attention shifted to the back row. You should have seen her squeezing past the other ladies in her magenta-and-white checked dress with matching wide-brimmed hat, perfect church-going attire for 1955, white gloves and all. Vintage Godiva, courtesy of The Way We Were shop in Gainesville. Afterward she had marched up to Reverend Brasleton and shaken his hand heartily.
“What were you saying to him?” I asked on the way home.
“Only that the music was lovely and God was probably enjoying it immensely from Her place on high.” Typical Godiva, so full of herself.
Once she thought I had returned to her way of seeing things, she became almost unbearable in her patronizing.
“I think Mrs. Brasleton believes I’ve beaten you into atheistic submission. I told her, and I mean this, Noodle, honestly, that I hope you did not make your about-face on my account. I want you to live by your own beliefs, whether I agree with them or not.”
Then she began to grill me on the lock-in. Mrs. Brasleton’s call gave her the opening she’d probably been looking for. Had there been an incident of some sort, she wanted to know, had I been made uncomfortable in some way, or disillusioned.
“Nothing bad happened.” I did not lie. “I simply realized I was not meant to be a Baptist.”
My answer more or less satisfied Godiva. She was glad to believe I was over my religious phase. Godiva is big into phases, whether of the moon or of people’s lives. Besides, she was so busy herself all fall that she wasn’t quite as obsessive as usual about every nook and cranny of my life. She was spending hours in her studio every night, all excited about a new creative breakthrough. Godiva has always had lots of creative breakthroughs. She was also visiting that little Franklin kid all the time. For some reason witnessing his accident really shook her up. She went to the hospital in Perry at least once a week, almost an hour each way. She was also over at the gallery more, plotting her new show with Cleo.
And then there was Godiva’s friendship with Mrs. Culpepper. It was pretty weird that they would be friends. B.D. (Before Discovery, remember), I would have resented Godiva horning in, but now I was almost glad because, since Mrs. Culpepper was her friend, Godiva was less concerned if I went off alone with Cass. So Cass and I came up with covers for each other all the time, and she gave me rides home in the afternoons. Sometimes she even took me all the way into the university library. While I researched, she shopped or visited some guys she knew from Esmeralda who had rented a house off-campus. It was tricky, but there were books and magazines that dear old Grassly didn’t have.
One Saturday night early in November, I was late getting back from a trek to Gainesville, so I was relieved not to see Miranda parked in front of the house yet. I was just taking off my jacket when the phone rang.
“I stopped by Cleo’s and she wants to talk about the show setup,” Godiva said. “Can you get your own dinner?”
“I’ll manage.”
“So what will you do tonight? No parties?” As if I went to parties. “If I’m later than ten, I’ll call.” Over the phone her voice sounded older, more sedate, almost motherly. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge, yogurt and fruit if you’re still dieting.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t starve.” I was not dieting anymore (I smuggled bags of M&M’s into the Grassly all the time despite the handwritten sign barring food or drink from the building), but of course Godiva had no idea.
“So, you’re all set, then.” She sounded a million miles away. “I love you.”
I went straight to the I Ching shelf and took down the envelope. It was still there as if completely forgotten, as if no one had ever discovered it. I had made my own copy on the Grassly’s copier, just one. Any more would be tempting fate. I have it with me now, but somehow the original, wrinkled and dirt-smudged, brought me closer to you. Of course, now I am closer for real.
Anyway, I had developed a little ritual. First, close the doors, unsash the curtains, turn off all the lights but the glass lamp. Then line up the candles, two short pinkish ones and a tall amber one, and light them one at a time. Wait until the scents of cinnamon and rose overwhelm the room’s usual salty musk before opening the envelope. Unfold carefully, kissing each corner before laying it flat under the lamp to study.
I always found something new. That evening it was how, instead of holding your head straight like most people would for a police photo, you pulled your chin in toward your neck. Pressing your jaw down pulled the corners of your mouth into a thin frown, as if you were humming a deep-throated scale to yourself when the photographer snapped. I like to think you are less stern, or less sad, in person. And if you are sad, I will make you less sad. Our reunion was obviously meant to be or I wouldn’t have heard that newscast. I wonder, did you hear it, too? Over Thanksgiving? On Public Radio.
We’d spent Thanksgiving afternoon the same as we’d spent it every year since we got to Esmeralda—at Cleo’s. We got there around noon. Cleo, in her pink muumuu, swept us in. Her friends Hudson Something and Matty and Gordon Somethingelse were already slugging down their pink mimosas. “Aunt” Matty hugged, the “uncles” patted and pinched, as if they had been waiting all year just to see their little non-niece again. Actually, they came for Thanksgiving at Cleo’s because it was a good stopover on their way from wherever they came from in the Midwest to wherever they were heading in southern Florida for the winter. But everyone always pretended to be family at Cleo’s Thanksgivings. I never minded because they always brought me inappropriate but outrageously expensive gifts that cracked me up. This year I got a Miss America Barbie doll from Mattie and a bottle of Chanel No. 5 from Hudson. I swear when he handed it over, his eyes glinted with a dirty-old-man leer but no one else noticed.
Soon more people arrived. Harry Somebody had worked with Cleo’s husband at the mill. He brought his new wife. It was fairly obscene, that old guy holdi
ng hands with a girl who was maybe five years older than me. The Bosell sisters showed up again. They are so strange. They’re Cleo’s neighbors, and they never go anywhere without each other. Beatrice is taller and Grace is darker, but they are basically interchangeable, and they share a hissing lisp that I suppose they can’t help but that gives me the creeps. Then Cleo led in a couple with a little boy. All three wore uncomfortable, slightly dazed smiles as if they weren’t sure they were supposed to be there, or that they wanted to be. There were always a few stragglers like these at Cleo’s. She made a point of inviting anyone she assumed would not have a grand enough Thanksgiving otherwise. When Godiva saw the couple, she gave Cleo a look but then galloped right over to the boy, who looked about eight, one of those skinny kids who always has snot dripping out their nose.
“Well, Philip Rainey, I didn’t expect to see you today. And so spiffy in that bow tie.” Godiva acted all thrilled that he was there. It turns out he was the other kid from the famous accident. Cleo obviously wanted the Raineys around so she could tell her friends from out of town all about Godiva’s big moment of heroism. Good for sales and all that.
Mrs. Rainey looked pretty, dainty and elegant in her plain dark suit. I felt sorry for her. Mr. Rainey was ugly, with scarred, leathery skin. And the kid was a brat. When we went into Cleo’s bedroom to watch TV, he kept switching channels. By the time I left him in there, he was using Cleo’s eyeliner as a pencil to draw all over Cleo’s pink bedspread.