Select Few

by Marit Weisenberg

  “That’s street parking,” Angus said calmly.

  The man started to sputter. “You leave your car, it won’t be there when you get back.”

  Angus’s eyes turned a crystal blue. “You don’t want to touch that car.”

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing Angus’s sleeve.

  “Tell those covies to pick up their trash,” the man belted, sounding unhinged.

  We crossed the street to the car, and I now saw the battered steel lockbox with the faded number 2330 next to the top of a staircase. We’d walked right past when we got out of the car. Angus grabbed one of the orange cones and drop-kicked it across the street into the man’s front yard. The man still watched us menacingly, cell phone now held to his ear.

  “Let’s go,” Angus said as he stepped down onto the first stair.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, yeah. Come on. This gets better all the time.” Angus smiled and held out his hand.

  “Of course this wouldn’t be normal.”

  “What’s normal?”

  We descended into the mist, and the stairs continued on a relentless downward course. It was cold and damp for summer. We were stuck in the infamous Bay Area fog. It had been clear and warm just ten miles south. We walked down many stories of treacherous stairs. I was surprised when we were met at the base by a very elderly woman.

  Small, tan, and weathered, she stood on the beach with a pair of binoculars. I wondered if she was bird-watching. She looked like she could have been one hundred years old, but she was obviously still spry with her salt-and-pepper hair in youthful long braids.

  When she saw us, she picked up a chalkboard that hung around her neck.

  She scratched: “Private property. Public beaches nearby.”

  I squinted into the distance, and the beach came alive, images growing sharp against the ocean. A few people in wetsuits played in the surf as a light mist rose from the water. Farther down the beach were weathered bungalows on stilts, all a matching silvered wood.

  “We came here to see Elizabeth Blackcomb,” Angus said.

  The woman paused and seemed to take another look at me. She picked up her chalkboard and took longer to write this time, at one point licking a finger to erase and start over.

  “There’s a wait-list to see her.”

  “We’ll wait then,” Angus said, my spokesperson since I no longer seemed to have any words.

  The woman tried again. “She’s in silence till Tuesday.”

  “We’ll come back,” I said, tugging on Angus’s sleeve, heading to the stairs. I looked back over my shoulder when I’d retreated two stairs up. The old woman studied me hard. Angus was still waiting at the foot of the stairs, looking down the beach, trying to figure out what this place was.

  “Angus,” I said. He turned and joined me.

  After we’d scaled the first major portion of the stairs, he said. “Stop.”

  “What is this place?” I asked immediately.

  “It’s got to be more than some kind of yoga retreat. Do you feel the energy down here?” Angus asked, some excitement in his voice.

  “I do. It’s different though,” I said, referring to the aura surrounding our family.

  “It’s not as strong.” In the distance we saw the little woman walking bandy-legged down the beach to a small group of shirtless men. One carried a small kayak over his head. “She’s going to tell them about us.” Angus looked at me. “You shouldn’t have to wait until Tuesday. We came from fucking Texas to see her.”

  “No, I came to see Menlo Park.”

  “We came to see your mother. You should not have to wait. Come on, we can leave as soon as you meet her. And now I’ve got to meet this woman who has a wait-list.”

  I let Angus lead me back the way we came. We walked down the stretch of beach, staying close to the houses on stilts, using them as cover. I counted sixteen of them. We drew closer and closer to the large group sitting in a circle on blankets on the beach.

  We stopped at the largest house and stood beneath it. From our vantage point, we could watch the group meditating below, closer to the water. Every one was dressed in white. I focused on the slender form of a woman whose dark hair hung loose to her waist, whose face was turned away from us. I couldn’t take my eyes off her perfectly still back.

  “They have to stand sometime. Do you think that’s her?” Angus asked, spotting the same person. I wasn’t sure if he saw my nod.

  We waited. The sun was higher in the sky now, beginning to burn off some of the fog. I leaned against one stilt. It was easy to get lulled by the rhythmic, deafening crash of the waves. At one point we saw a couple struggling with chic luggage walk past, guided by the old woman. Meditation tourists, I guessed. The group would stir any second and then I’d have to do this. It wasn’t too late to walk away. I still didn’t know a thing.

  “Angus.” I was about to tell him I wanted to leave when all at once, like a herd, the group of thirty people rose. I watched in wonder as the woman I’d been studying turned in our direction and began to walk away from the ocean and toward the bungalows. The group fanned out, but a few people followed the woman with the streaming black hair, speaking to her and slowing her progress.

  A well-heeled couple walked ahead of the group, reaching the house where we were waiting, unaware of our presence in the shadows. “We chose this over fourteen days in Mozambique? I can’t feel my left leg,” the man said.

  The woman violently shushed him, and they walked up the outdoor stairs to the bungalow above us.

  The woman I assumed to be Elizabeth and her entourage drew closer to us. I took a few steps deeper into the shadows.

  “Let’s go. Let’s leave.” I pulled back on Angus’s arm.

  “We’re here now. Just do it. You have every right.” He gave me a not-so-soft push out into the sunlight.

  The procession was just going up the stairs. My movement caught the eye of one person.

  She turned her head, never slowing her progress up the stairs. It felt like slow motion when our eyes met and an electricity passed between us. I saw in her eyes that she recognized herself staring back at her. Except for the color of my eyes. The same color as Novak’s.

  She shifted her gaze forward and continued walking.

  “I’ll go through the front and you go through the back, okay?” Angus said. “One of us will find someone to speak to before they kick us out.”

  Then Angus was gone. Up top I heard a sliding door close.

  I walked farther out into the sunlight, stunned, picking up on the remnants of energy she’d left behind. She’d known I was her daughter. I could tell. Yet she’d hidden it as expertly as a Puri.

  Right above me was my mother who’d just seen me for the first time since I’d been a baby. I’d just seen the person who had carried me inside her.

  I was all adrenaline as I ran up the steps. No one was on the deck. I opened the rickety sliding glass door and entered the living room where a small group of people were assembled on mildewed wall-to-wall carpeting at the feet of Elizabeth Blackcomb. Elizabeth sat on a wicker chair with her legs tucked under her. She was dressed in white, and her hair, parted down the middle, draped over one shoulder. Elizabeth was skinny, making her beautiful face hard. She was scary in her remoteness. Her eyes were almost exactly like mine, narrow and heavy-lidded, except the color was so dark.

  Two young men who looked like models, hair bleached from the sun, sat on the floor on either side of her chair. People dressed in yoga pants and loose blouses served plates of fruit and those who’d been served were eating silently. It was a light-filled room that didn’t feel austere. It felt content. One of the beautiful young men in flowing pants and beads around his wrist handed Elizabeth a cup. She continued to stare at her lap as she took it.

  Just then Angus appeared in the doorway opposite me. At once a
man stood and walked over to him. Angus looked like he was prepared to push him away and make a scene. Elizabeth still wouldn’t come out of her shell even though she could presumably sense intruders in the room.

  Angus saw Elizabeth, seated like a queen, willfully existing in another dimension, and then he looked back at me. He understood she knew I was there but wouldn’t look at me. He dropped his hands to his sides.

  Two large men, including the one who’d served Elizabeth, came to my side. They each lightly grasped an elbow to escort me out. Just before I made their job easy, I took one last look at my birth mother who was refusing to acknowledge me.

  Fuck you.

  And then I looked at her steaming hot tea cup, and from across the room, I jostled it. Tea splashed onto the saucer and into her lap. The movement startled her.

  Instinctively, Elizabeth looked at me. She knew exactly where that kind of power came from. She’d seen it before. Maybe it was the reminder of Novak that made her unable to look away again.

  Elizabeth watched them begin to remove me from the room, but I craned my neck, my eyes fastened on hers. She kept her gaze fixed on mine, pretending not to care. Then there was just a flicker of doubt. I saw the fight within, then the exact second she broke, letting the memory of me come flying back to her, her eyes becoming pools of vulnerability.

  “Give them number thirteen.” Her voice rang out like a shot, shattering the silence.

  AUGUST, one month later

  JOHN

  And then there was the night at the La Quinta in Florida.

  I’d made Alex go off to Chili’s without me so, for once, I was by myself.

  I’d been sort of absentmindedly running my thumb over a long scrape on my leg from the match. I looked down and the scrape caught my eye. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed just a tiny bit shorter than it had been a few minutes before.

  I wanted to tell you, but you didn’t pick up. Then I decided it was probably counter to our agreement. But it felt so good. How would I attract unwanted attention by healing just myself?

  JULY

  Chapter Eighteen

  “She can’t talk with you until Tuesday. You wait here until then.”

  That was only two days from now. Even Angus didn’t argue with the tall, blond man who led us inside number thirteen, a bungalow at the far end of the crescent-shaped stretch of beach.

  “We don’t have any of our stuff,” I said, dazed, as I looked around the large studio.

  “I’m not going to tell them that,” Angus said to me as soon as the man left. “I have the feeling once we leave, we may never be let back in.”

  “I don’t have any bars on my cell phone.”

  “You just met your mother. What do you care about bars on your cell phone?” Angus looked at me incredulously. Then he got it. “He’ll understand when you tell him what happened. That you met her.”

  We both looked around the open room. It had a 1970s vibe but had been painted recently and was much nicer than the bungalow where we’d seen Elizabeth. Obviously this was where they put their paying guests. A queen-size bed with a wicker headboard was off to one side of the room, two rolled yoga mats were in a basket by the front door, and ferns hung in macramé holders in the small kitchenette. A gigantic basket of fresh fruit sat on the small table pushed up against a window with an ocean view. The sun had officially broken through, warming everything, and the water sparkled.

  Angus kicked off his shoes. “I don’t think I want to leave.”

  “You feel safe here?” I asked.

  “I don’t see why not. It’s a private, secluded beach where they’re operating an illegal business. We’ll move the car later—they must have a place for visitors to park. No one is going to call the cops.”

  He looked like a weight had lifted from his shoulders, almost like he’d just been let out of prison. He seemed more like a kid again.

  “She’s making me wait for two days to speak to her. This isn’t a vacation,” I said, trying to get his attention.

  “Relax. She wants you here. We didn’t know that your mother would be some goddess running a—what do they call this place?” Angus moved to the bedside table and picked up a thick, paper packet. “ ‘Intentional community.’ Julia, we have landed at an intentional community.”

  “Is that what this is?”

  “Are you laughing or about to cry? I can’t tell. Man, she knew exactly who you were.”

  “I look like her,” I said, warming up my arms with my hands as if that would help. I was still in shock, jittery, and hanging on every word of Angus’s interpretation of the meeting.

  “Yeah, but when you did that to her cup, she really knew—like that guy back in Colorado.” Angus surveyed the room and was drawn to the window and the ocean beyond. “So this is what life after Novak looks like. I’ll bet she wanted to forget all about him.”

  “Knowing what she paid, Novak practically gave this place to her.”

  “I’m disappointed though.”

  “Why are you the one disappointed?”

  “Part of me was expecting to maybe find a group like us down here. I thought maybe your mother was one of us. But I don’t feel it.”

  “She’s just—”

  “An outsider,” Angus supplied.

  I stared at some sand someone forgot to sweep.

  “Something is up with her though,” Angus continued, as if trying to make me feel better. “She’s special somehow. Clearly. She has an energy all her own. Maybe it’s all the meditation they do in this place and that’s why it feels good here. Can you relax?” Angus walked to me and grabbed my hand, trying to loosen me up.

  “No.” I gripped his hand hard.

  “Come on. This is at least part of the reason you wanted to come to California—to meet her. You can lie to yourself and say it’s only for him, and I’ve been playing along with that. But this is your chance to open the vault—at one point, you never thought you’d be allowed to find out about your past.”

  “It was easier not knowing. I should have left it. I don’t want to want anything from her.”

  “So don’t want anything,” Angus said.

  I wanted to kill him. “You may not have any emotions, but I do.”

  Angus looked at me like I was crazy. “I have them. I just know how to control them. You do too. That’s how we survive. If you need her to mean nothing to you, you know how to make that happen. This side of yourself you’ve been trying on? It’s only opened you up to weaknesses that have made you unhappy. That’s how I see it. And I’m sorry, but I’m happy. This place buys me more time to spend with you. I don’t have to leave for a few more days.”

  I was flooded with relief.

  Without touching it, Angus opened the thin bungalow door and walked onto the deck. “Get out here!”

  I followed. I stood next to him, placing my hands on the peeling white-painted railing, feeling the gritty sand beneath my fingertips. The ocean lay at our feet. We watched as a couple walked into the water and then ran, laughing, then screaming, as the tide came in and chased them back up the beach. I looked up at the cliffs, trying to see any signs of life up top. But those mansions were too far up and out of sight. We were secluded in this cove and could be anywhere in the world. This was a place where it was easy to pretend anything you wanted.

  “I’m going in!” Angus ripped off his T-shirt and ran down the stairs in a flash. He sprinted straight into the ocean and dove into a wave. Moments later, he burst out, white water shooting off of him. He let the momentum of smaller waves buoy him gently up and down. A man in a wet suit paddled in a sea kayak near Angus, holding up the haul of fish he was bringing back to shore, no doubt mystified by Angus’s tolerance for the cold water.

  I carefully kept my eyes on Angus, not wanting to watch Elizabeth, her back rigid, as she led a pack of strangers down the beach.

 
; When Angus emerged from the water, I joined him on the beach. The sun was high in the sky.

  “Dive in, Julia. Those waves are rough.”

  “I’ll pass. I don’t have anything to wear.”

  “I’m sure you can go naked and no one here would care.”

  I declined humorlessly, and we walked together back up the stairs to the deck. Angus turned on the rickety outdoor shower. It groaned and then made a loud sound as water spurted unevenly from the showerhead onto the deck. Angus turned his body around and around underneath, wiping the salt away with his hands. Obviously, the perceived charm of a reclusive beach community made customers willing to overlook certain signs of disrepair.

  I cautiously watched as a bald black man walked up the stairs of our bungalow. He wore flowing drawstring pants, carried folded towels under one arm, and held a basket with the other hand.

  “Maya wanted you to have supplies,” he said by way of greeting. In the basket were toothbrushes and yoga clothes.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Maya,” he repeated.

  “You mean Elizabeth?” Angus shut off the shower and shook his hair, spraying water like a dog before walking over to drip next to me.

  “Yes,” the man said. “What are your names?”

  Angus and I hadn’t even discussed whether I should use my real name to anyone other than my mother. “I’m Julia Jaynes,” I said, waiting for the recognition in his eyes at my name, which had been splashed across the news and jumped from there into the zeitgeist. But there was nothing. No recognition whatsoever.

  “And you are?” the man asked Angus.

  “Tyler,” Angus said, using the name on his fake ID.

  “You’re a couple?”

  “Yes,” Angus said at the same time I said, “No.”

  The man smiled slightly. “What brings you here?”