That’s too bad, said Wendy.
This must have been difficult for you, too, she said after a minute.
Garrett came through the doors. He looked as if he knew she’d be having a hard time.
Mother, he said. He put an arm around her shoulder and brushed her cheek with his face. How was your flight?
Terrible, of course, she said. I left three hours to get through the security at the airport, and I still wasn’t sure I’d make my plane. They picked me to be the one passenger whose bags had to be totally unpacked and inspected.
I guess you look like a particularly scary kind of person, he said. It was supposed to be a joke, but the truth was, she did.
I can tell you I did not appreciate having these people handling my personal belongings and laying everything out on the counter for all the world to see, she said.
Don’t tell me you brought that racy underwear, said Garrett.
Her grandmother ignored him. They start serving the meal at one-thirty, she said. That gives us time to take a walk around Union Square. Maybe Wendy would like to see the store windows decorated for Christmas.
She might be a little old for that, he told her.
Well, all right, Garrett, she said. What do I know? Some people continue to take an interest in Christmas decorations even when they’re significantly older than your daughter, however.
I was thinking we might take a taxi over to the Japanese garden, he said. I’d drive us, but we seem to be having a little car trouble.
It still amazes me, she said. The interest people take in Japan.
How so? he asked her. Mostly, it seemed as if every word her grandmother spoke was exactly what he’d expected to hear, but when she said that, he looked genuinely curious.
Considering the war, she said. Pearl Harbor and so forth.
That was almost sixty years ago, Mother. Some of us have started to get over it.
Fine, fine, she said. Make a joke of it. Hundreds of American servicemen lost their lives in that attack. Upstanding young men defending our country.
The taxi took them through Golden Gate Park to the place where the Japanese garden was. Her grandmother decided to stay in the cab and wait for them. No sense wasting the admission charge.
Garrett was right: Wendy loved the gardens. There was an archway at the entrance, like something out of a Japanese house. Inside, a series of walkways wound among flowering trees and water gardens. They walked over a little bridge and leaned over, looking down on a pool full of water lilies. He handed her a penny.
You never know, he said.
She thought a second. No point wishing for the things that were truly impossible. She wished that Josh and Louie, wherever they were, were having a happy time.
I warned you about her, he said.
I guess that’s just what happens when people get old.
That might explain it now, he said. The only problem is, she was like this forty years ago.
She must have been in a good mood sometimes, Wendy said. On Christmas or something. Didn’t she have some special hobbies?
Wendy was thinking about her mother’s face when she got home from the Mark Morris dance performance that time, how excited and happy she’d looked. But so many other times, too, too many to count. On Martha’s Vineyard that day they rented the bicycles. At Louie’s day-care group last June, watching their play, The Story of a Tooth. Rollerblading with her along the West Side Highway near Battery Park. Dancing with Josh in the kitchen.
Let’s see, he said. My mother always liked getting her hair done. She used to say the great thing about sitting under the dryer was that nobody came along and bothered you.
There was a teahouse in the Japanese garden, where you could sit and order tea and little Japanese crackers. Wendy thought how nice it would be to sit there and look out at the ducks, if her grandmother wasn’t outside waiting for them.
We’ll come back another time, he told her. When it’s just the two of us.
That would be good, Wendy said.
You think she’s a piece of work, he said. You should have met my father.
So, Wendy, her grandmother said when they were back in the cab. What clubs do you belong to at school?
Stamp collecting, she said. Also cooking.
Your grandfather used to collect stamps, she said. Maybe it runs in the family. I’d give you his collection, but I threw it out a long time ago.
I also belong to the Cactus Society, Wendy said. It just came to her.
Cactus Society? And what might that be?
Wendy looked at Garrett. He wasn’t having a problem with this, clearly.
We study various species of cactus and trade specimens, she said. Sometimes we go out in the desert and collect cactuses—cacti, I mean. We bring shovels and camp out overnight.
You should see the stuff they bring back, Garrett said. One cactus Wendy collected on her last trip was actually carnivorous. Took out a piece of my dog Shiva’s tail just like that, fur and all.
Not only that, said Wendy. But on that same trip when I got the meat-eating cactus, my teacher got bitten by a rattlesnake. He would have died, but this girl in our club knew the antidote. She sucked the poison out with her mouth, and spit it out before she had a chance to swallow any.
Things have changed since my day, her grandmother said. I belonged to Girl’s Junior Tennis and the Daughters of the American Revolution. Of course, those were the days when young ladies still wore gloves and took dancing lessons. I don’t suppose you take dancing lessons, Wendy?
Actually, I do, she said. Belly.
That would be ballet, her grandmother said.
No, belly. You know, with bells and those little clapper things you put in your hands, and harem pants?
When you’ve got it, flaunt it, right, Wendy? Garrett said. His hair was starting to come out of the ponytail, and she could tell he was having a hard time not laughing.
It’s a very ancient art, Wendy said. It goes all the way back to Genghis Khan.
It’s interesting that we should be talking about ballet dancing, her grandmother said, Because as it happens, I had a little surprise in store. I got the three of us tickets to see The Nutcracker tonight with the San Francisco Ballet. Thinking of how your mother cared so much about dance.
Wendy didn’t know why, but it made her uncomfortable when her grandmother mentioned her mother. She had almost been having a good time for a minute there, but then she wasn’t anymore.
That sounds great, Wendy said. I love ballet.
The meal was served buffet-style. They’d set up a row of tables in the hotel dining room with turkey, and also ham and roast beef and a bunch of vegetable side dishes and a centerpiece involving a pilgrim and an Indian and a lot of chrysanthemums, and a cornucopia with American flags coming out where you’d expect to see fruits and vegetables. At another table, there were pies, every kind you could think of—also chocolate mousse and carrot cake and silver trays with cookies and candies in the shape of turkeys. Wendy couldn’t believe it when her grandmother came back with her dessert choice, strawberry Jell-O.
Rich food doesn’t agree with me, she said.
Wendy had chosen pumpkin pie and a smaller slice of pecan.
Some of us don’t seem to be thinking much about our figures, she said.
For the love of God, Mother, she’s thirteen years old, Garrett said. Couldn’t you wait till she was at least fourteen before you get to work on totally annihilating her self-esteem?
I should have known it was too much to expect that the three of us might spend a holiday meal in each other’s company without some of your snide remarks, Garrett, she said. Not that I’d expect much consideration from you, but I might have hoped you’d consider your daughter’s feelings.
I do consider my daughter, he said. I consider her feelings plenty, actually. More than you appear to, making a bunch of idiotic complaints about airport delays, when the kid’s mother just died.
Under the table, Wendy gripp
ed her napkin. She could see her grandmother’s face crumple. Her hand, halfway to her mouth, looked thin and old, with its clanky bracelets and age spots. The Jell-0 on her spoon trembled.
I’m sorry to do this in front of you, Slim, he said. But there’s a limit.
First, Mother, you call me up and tell me how important it is to fly out to New York and get my daughter. She should be in the bosom of her family, you say. The bosom. Right. Nice cozy place that turns out to be.
Wendy didn’t want to, but she couldn’t stop looking at her grandmother. It felt as if all the air had suddenly been sucked from the room.
We’ll hire lawyers if we have to, you say. She belongs with us now. And just who is this us anyway? The ladies at your bridge club, once they check on her background first, to make sure there isn’t any Jewish blood in her, like you were always wondering about her mother? Sign her up for Miss Porter’s School, so she can learn how to fold napkins and do the fox-trot at her coming-out party when she turns sixteen? And maybe, if you do the job right, turn her into as dried-up and small-minded a person as you someday?
He wasn’t yelling, but people at the tables next to him had started to look up from their meals. Moments like this, his mother said, I could swear you were your father.
He was the smart one, Garrett said. He knew enough to get away.
In the end, it was just the two of them, Wendy and her grandmother, who attended the ballet. Garrett said he’d pass. Give the extra ticket to some homeless person, he said.
He told Wendy he was going to stay at an old friend’s over in the Mission. Your own hotel room at the Fairmont all to yourself, he said. Not too shabby.
He said he’d pick her up in the morning. I don’t like leaving you to your own devices this way, he said. But if I stuck around, I might just strangle her.
The odd thing was that once it was over, her grandmother didn’t seem much different. A little quieter maybe.
The present she’d bought Wendy at Lord & Taylor turned out to be a smocked dress. Wendy didn’t know they still made them in her size. You can wear it to the ballet, her grandmother said.
At least nobody would know her there.
If there’s one ballet I don’t ever have to see for the rest of my life, it’s The Nutcracker, her mother used to say. When I think about all the children who get dragged off to see that thing year after year as their introduction to dance performance and come away convinced they’ll never attend another ballet. No piece of repertoire ever set the cause of ballet further back than that piece of sentimental junk.
Don’t feel you have to be inhibited on our account, said Josh. We want you to be free to express your uncensored opinions.
The Christmas ballet her mother loved, Wendy knew, was the Mark Morris version, The Hard Nut, with the skinny cross-dressing maid in black toe shoes and the party guests dressed up in sixties clothes, and Mark Morris himself—the only man she might have left Josh for, her mother used to tell him—dressed up as some kind of Indian swami in a veil. When the Sugar Plum Fairies came out, the whole stage filled with sparkles. Much more interesting than some old tree they crank up to the ceiling every year, her mother said.
They’d gone to see The Hard Nut two times, and this year, even though the tickets were expensive, her mother had been planning to take Louie. Maybe Kate would take him now. Except that it would only make them all sad.
Going to see The Nutcracker has always been a tradition for me, her grandmother said. The hyphen mouth was back. Wait till you see what happens to the Christmas tree at the end.
She bought Wendy one of the special five-dollar programs, even though she didn’t ask for it. This will be a keepsake for you to show your friends, she said.
I notice the girl playing Clara is actually a year younger than you. That just goes to show what a person can accomplish with a little stick-to-itiveness and discipline.
My mother was Clara four different times, Wendy said. This was actually true.
Of course, a lot can happen between adolescence and middle age, said her grandmother. Just look at your father. You should have seen him as a young person. The artistic talent. He was supposed to study at the Rhode Island School of Design. Not to mention where he could have gone with his tennis.
What do you think happened to him? Wendy asked. For a second, she imagined that she was some old lady having tea with her grandmother, exchanging stories about their sorry, messed-up children.
This falling in love business, said her grandmother. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
Twenty-Three
Alone in her hotel room, Wendy folded the smocked dress and stuck it in a drawer of the bureau. Maybe the next person who stayed in this room would want it.
She ran a bath. It was a deep tub, and there were little bottles of bath gel and a shower cap. She lay in the water for a long time, her head leaning back against the porcelain of the tub. She wished again she’d thought to call Josh and Louie, but now it would be too late in New York.
When she got out of the tub, she put on the white terry-cloth robe that had Fairmont Hotel stitched on the pocket. She flipped through the room-service menu. Josh had taught her about room service one time when she and her mother went with him to Syracuse for a gig. Pick a dish, any dish, he told her. All we have to do is pick up the phone and they bring the food right to our room, and they only charge three times the usual.
Now she picked up the phone and made her voice sound low, more like a grown-up. This is room five sixteen, she said. We’d like a dish of cashews and a Coke as soon as possible. And if you have raspberries, those would also be good.
The raspberries came with whipped cream on the side. The bill came to twenty-one dollars, but all she had to do was sign her name and write down that she was adding five dollars for a tip. Josh had taught her that, too.
She took off the bathrobe and put on her pajamas. She climbed into the large bed and set the tray next to her. It turned out there was also a piece of chocolate on her pillow, wrapped in gold foil.
She piled up the pillows and opened her book. She only had a few more pages left in The Member of the Wedding.
It was the night of the wedding where Frankie had thrown herself in the dirt, begging her brother and his new wife to take her with them. But they had driven away without her. Frankie was back home with her father now, but she’d made a plan. She was going to run away. She was going to catch a train someplace, and wherever it was headed, that’s where she’d go.
Wendy folded back the remaining pages of the book, not to read them, just to count how many there were. She wished there were more. She reached for a handful of cashews—twenty calories apiece, but she never counted anymore—and took a slow sip of Coke.
In the book, Frankie wrote her father a farewell letter. “I told you I was going to leave town because it is inevitable,” she wrote. “I cannot stand this existence any longer. . . . Please Papa do not try to capture me.”
Wendy reached for a raspberry. She imagined what Garrett would do if she ran off on a train someplace. Would he chase after her in his truck? She thought about the soldier in the hotel room who had tried to take Frankie’s clothes off. What she would do if some man burst into her hotel room and tried to take her pajamas off? She wondered if she could hit him over the head with the Coke bottle.
Wendy got out of bed. Standing in front of the hotel mirror, she undid the top two buttons of her pajama top and looked at her chest. I always wished I had a shape, her mother’d said in the fitting room at Macy’s.
Outside her room, Wendy could see the lights of San Francisco. This city was a lot different from New York. The buildings weren’t as tall here, and there was more sky. From the window, she could see a corner of the bay and a bridge, not the same one she and her father had crossed that morning, but another one, stretching across to some other city. Over there is Berkeley, Garrett told her, as if she would know what that was.
That island is Alcatraz, where they used to keep the mos
t dangerous prisoners. You can take a boat out there and go inside the prison cells. Out of all the prisoners kept there over the years, there wasn’t a single one who successfully escaped. A few who tried swimming to shore were never found, but more than likely they drowned in that freezing water. Some people would rather die trying to get out than just sit there.
Eighty-seven floors. Run.
Frankie’s father was asleep when she tried to run away, so she had been able to slip his wallet out of his pants pocket without him noticing. She was going to use the money to live on while she was on the lam, starting with buying the train ticket, but it turned out that he only had three dollars and a few cents in his wallet, and she knew that wasn’t enough.
At first Frankie was thinking she’d hop a freight. Then she realized that would be too hard.
She was still figuring out what to do when the police found her. When she got to that part, Wendy felt a clutch at her stomach, as if she was the one running away. She wasn’t even sure if it was a good thing that Frankie had tried to leave. Maybe she was really too young and should have stayed home with her father after all. Probably it wouldn’t have worked for her to be off on a train to Chicago all by herself. Still, Wendy registered a stab of regret that Frankie wasn’t even going to make it out of Alabama after all.
“The world was now so far away that Frances could no longer think of it,” Wendy read. “She did not see the earth as in the old days, cracked and loose and turning a thousand miles an hour; the earth was enormous and still and flat. Between herself and all the places there was a space like an enormous canyon she could not hope to bridge or cross.”
She lay there a long time, reading and rereading that part and thinking about what it meant. She knew when she read the words that was how it had been for her after her mother disappeared—waiting for her to come back and coming to the slow, awful realization that she never would. The feeling she’d had first, of panic and horror, the world spinning out of control. And how, in the days and then weeks that followed, the numbness had set in to replace it.
The Usual Rules Page 23