Carolyn wanted to go, but she only had a week left to get her cactus garden finished before the official opening of the office building. Even with Violet helping—Violet and Walter Charles, was how Carolyn put it—she was going to be working right down to the wire. So it was just the two of them, Wendy and her father, driving to San Francisco again.
He took her first to the Palace of the Legion of Honor to look at art. She might have thought, if they were looking at art, it would be modern, but what he wanted to show her were the sculptures by Auguste Rodin—big bronze figures, some inside the building, some arranged in gardens outside.
When I was a kid, my mother took me to Paris, he said. We did all the usual things, the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, and we rode a train out to see the French Open for a couple of days even, this being the period when my parents still had high hopes for my tennis career.
But my favorite place in Paris, though you might not have expected it, was this smaller museum they have there of Rodin sculptures. You could walk around the garden and actually touch them all. In a book, you only get to see the one view, but the great thing about seeing them in real life is how you can walk around taking in all the different angles. How different the work looks, depending on where you’re standing.
He’s a classical sculptor, he said. These works were cast more than a hundred years ago. But the thing that knocked me out then and still does was how totally wild and modern the guy was in certain ways. What an absolute madman, but in the best way.
They were standing in front of a sculpture called the Burghers of Calais. Six large figures of men draped in flowing robes that even though they were bronze looked real as fabric.
Wendy knew, from all the sketches and drawings inside the museum, and what was written in the explanation, that Rodin had spent months sketching the hands and feet, the expressions on the faces of the men. He had studied the placement of muscles and tendons and bones, the same way she tried to when she drew. He definitely knew anatomy.
First he learned what the rules were, Garrett said. Then he threw them all away. Look at the feet on these characters. And the hands. They’re twice the size of how a normal person’s hands and feet would be in proportion to the rest of the body. Here, they look totally right, and if all of a sudden someone changed it and gave them normal feet, you’d probably wonder what was wrong. Because the big feet just work. But what gave him that idea? How in hell did he know the usual rules just didn’t apply to his sculptures?
Look at the expressions on their faces, Garrett said. There’s nothing handsome or beautiful about them in the ordinary sense. Some of the people in Rodin sculptures are downright ugly. Still, for a hundred years now, people have been knocked out by this sculpture and calling it beautiful. Which is true. It’s just that none of the conventional standards of beauty apply. With Rodin, beauty can mean big old ugly feet and these twisted, tortured faces.
It was like what Josh used to say about jazz, that the most exciting music, for him, was never the melodic stuff. It was Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman taking it outside on his saxophone, Art Blakey smashing out a drum solo as if what he was really trying for was to destroy everything in his path, and when he was finished, he might just have succeeded, too. The skinny maid in the Mark Morris version of The Nutcracker pirouetting across the stage in her black toe shoes and maid’s uniform, only she wasn’t really a ballerina at all—she was a man.
It’s the moments of dissonance that stay with you, Garrett said. Then he began talking about artists she didn’t really know—a photographer named Diane Arbus, who took pictures of people in mental institutions, a painter named Robert Rauschenberg, who made a beautiful image, and then, for the final touch, tore a giant gash down one side. And another one whose name she knew, Jackson Pollock, who threw paint across the canvas as if it was blood.
Making art isn’t about creating something pretty, he said. Any more than life is. It’s about telling the truth.
After, they went out for Chinese food, to a place that had the best dim sum in Chinatown, he said. She hadn’t had dim sum since he came to New York that day when she was little and took her to F. A. O. Schwarz.
Now they sat facing each other across the table under a red-and-gold wall hanging of cranes. He poured her green tea.
Fourteen, he said. Good age. Of course, I thought you were fourteen already, for a while there. But now I can see you were more like thirteen then. You’re definitely more of the fourteen-year-old type now.
I do feel older, she said. Not in a bad way. She thought then about the note her mother had slipped under her door the spring before, telling her things would look different once she wasn’t thirteen anymore. She could never have imagined.
Take a person like me, he said. Being forty-nine instead of forty-eight could be stressful. And we won’t even talk about the number that comes after that. But going from thirteen to fourteen is definitely a good thing.
They ordered. She let him do the choosing. Trust me on this, he said. Dim sum is a specialty of mine.
It arrived on a bamboo platter, arranged like flowers. He must have talked to someone in the kitchen, because there was also a special dumpling in the middle, larger than the others, with a candle.
So I was thinking it would be good to check in right about now and see how you’re doing, he said. He sounded a little uncomfortable, like someone who’s been reading the Understanding Your Teenager book.
Fine, she told him.
I mean nobody would expect you to be totally fine. A lot has happened.
I’m doing okay, she said. When she wasn’t, he couldn’t have done anything about it anyway.
Some people would say you might want to go talk to a therapist or something, he said. I was never that type myself, but I could understand if you did. Just say the word.
That’s okay.
He paused. He reached for another dim sum. So did she.
The other thing I wanted to let you know is, I talked to Josh. I called him up. I thought it might be a good idea if the two of us were in communication.
Wendy tried to imagine the two of them, her tall, thin, gangly father with his wisps of gray hair—less wild-looking since he’d cut off his ponytail, but still not exactly Friendly Farm material—and the broad, stocky figure of Josh, with his love handles and the bit of a belly that was the badge, he said, of a man with an appropriate attitude concerning chocolate. Her jazz-loving dad, who knew the names of every character on Sesame Street, even the minor ones, who couldn’t let a day go by without leaving her mom some Post-it note to say how crazy he was about her. Her other father, who may have been happiest alone in a trout stream—there or in a bar with a bunch of strangers. A man who owned every recording Bob Marley ever made, whose romantic gesture for the woman he no doubt loved was having her cactus spade sharpened.
He’s a good guy, her father said. He thinks the world of you, of course. So we agreed on that for starters.
Wendy couldn’t say anything. The thought of these two men who had loved her mother in their different ways, at different times in her life—the one who had screwed everything up, by his own admission, and the one who had picked up the pieces after—made her feel a great, hollow sadness. These two men would never in a million years know each other, if it wasn’t for the woman who had loved each of them. Now they had each other’s phone numbers—they had discussed the Yankees even, Garrett was telling her now. He had asked Josh if he’d ever run into this old friend of his from the Village, a sax player by the name of Ronnie.
Now they were talking to each other. Josh and Garrett: her father and her other father. They didn’t hate each other. They might even become friends. Except that the person who had brought them together wasn’t there. Like someone who sends out party invitations, only when the guests arrive, she isn’t there, and they stand around eating the food without her.
We both agreed that all we want is what’s best for you, Garrett said. In Josh’s case, it’s not ju
st him that misses you, but the little guy, Louie. Though according to him, your little brother’s doing a lot better than he was for a while there.
I told him about school. I thought he might look at me as a total jerk for letting you bag eighth grade that way back in the fall, but he understood. I don’t think it bothered him that much, though he was glad to hear you’re going on a regular basis now. Playing in the band.
For a moment she imagined she might not even be part of this picture. It could just be the two of them, Josh and Garrett, off at a ball game somewhere, reminiscing together about what a terrific person her mother had been and then getting around to who was the greatest ballplayer of all time, Ted Williams or Babe Ruth. She felt mad without knowing why, but maybe it had something to do with the thought that they had been talking about her life without her there to participate. Deciding what was best, the way adults seemed to so often.
So what we came up with was that you should finish the school year out here and after that we’d evaluate. We figured Josh and Louie could come out here and visit sometime near the end of your term, maybe when they’re putting on a concert at your school, so he could hear you play with the band. If he stuck around till summer vacation, you could go off camping, and if you wanted, you could go back to New York with him for a visit. Take it from there.
He was chewing on a dim sum as he said this. The crab is my own personal favorite, he said. You’ve got to try one of these. He held the dim sum out to her between the gold-lacquered chopsticks.
For the last several minutes, a feeling had been overtaking her. It was so unfamiliar, she didn’t even recognize it at first. For so long now—since her mother died—she had kept these kinds of feelings to herself. Even when it was just her, by herself, she never let them out, or recognized that they were there, even.
There had been times in the past, with her mother, when fury had exploded out of her. Even Josh—though he tried so hard to keep the peace and made whatever adaptions were necessary to ensure it—had found himself on the receiving end of her anger, especially one time, when her mother had talked about the idea of Josh adopting her. But ever since September, she had been careful to contain strong emotion. She let herself cry now and then—not even much of that. She had felt grief and desolation, loneliness, and certainly confusion. But not one time in five months had she felt pure rage rise out of her, as she knew it was about to now.
Did it ever occur to you? she asked. She spoke quietly, but she knew she was summoning her energy for the next. Did you ever for one moment consider the possibility that I might have some opinions about my life?
She could feel her body stiffening, her spine locking, something flooding into her, different from grief this time. A kind of fierce, resolute power, like the girl in the canoe in Maine in the picture her mother liked best, who got that boat to shore.
I only meant, he said. We were thinking. I never had to deal with anything like this before. I’m probably not very good at it.
He had set the chopsticks down with the dim sum. She looked at his face, and the long-ago memory came to her of the night in the New Jersey motel. Her father, coming out of the bathroom with the towel around his waist. The girl with the tattoo on her breast. Her mother’s ravaged face on the ride back to Brooklyn, and the next day, throwing their belongings in Kate’s car, and all those days after that. His infrequent and unannounced visits over the years, and his calm, quiet look of bemusement at her mother’s fury, which always left it seeming as if her mother was the crazy one—hysterical, even—considering all he’d done was show up at the door, Mr. Mellow, with a fish he’d caught or a spaghetti squash from his garden, and not a single ounce of bitterness or resentment.
She had said as much to her mother, many times. Look at my father. He never says one mean thing about you. He’s always easygoing. You’re the bitter one, the one that can’t let it go.
He didn’t have to let anything go, her mother said. He never held on in the first place. Of course he was easygoing.
Easy gone.
Oh great, her mother said. He buys a doll at F. A. O. Schwarz. Where was he when the bills came due for Montessori? Where was he for medical insurance?
I can’t believe he actually managed to harvest a crop from his garden, her mother had said, the time he brought them the squash, after an absence of two years. Knowing he’s the kind of guy who would water and fertilize like crazy, when the mood struck him. And then forget about it so long, the next time he thought to check there’d be nothing but a few stunted plants and weeds.
He’d be better off raising something like mold, she said.
Definitely not a child.
She saw her mother, back on the day she moved the last of the costumes out of her dancing school and sold the fixtures. Thinking of her as she was that day—the crushed look as she watched the truck drive away with the last of the mirrors—Wendy wanted to slap his handsome face. Partly for how he had abandoned her mother. More so for the way his endlessly alluring presence had brought about Wendy’s own betrayal and abandonment of her.
To Wendy, it had always seemed as if her father’s unexpected arrivals possessed a certain magical quality, like Peter Pan swooping in the window, though she had liked it less well when he swooped out. Now she saw him as her mother had—a man whose ease and charm was made possible by carelessness and lack of attention. The thought of it—most of all, the memory of their last terrible fights about the trip to California he’d proposed in his letter that fall—made her sick with regret.
You think a person can just drop their life and start being your daughter when it suits you, she said. You think you’re the big hero, rescuing me. And what did you think you had to rescue me from? Josh, who was around all those years, looking after my brother and me? My life that you never even bothered finding out about?
I’m sure I deserve this, he said. If it makes you feel better, go for it.
In the last ten years I only saw you four times, Wendy said. That and a few phone calls.
I was wrong, he told her. I didn’t know. I hated my own father for how absent he was, but I guess I ended up being more like him than I thought.
Then you come flying in, thinking you can change everything, she said. You don’t bother to call first. Like you assume I’ll be there whenever it suits your timetable. Like my whole life up to that point was spent waiting for you to show up. On Halloween, of all nights.
He wasn’t saying anything anymore. Just nodding.
Here I am ready to take you to California, you say. My mother dies and you think it’s like now everything she did over the years and the life we had didn’t matter. Like just because her body isn’t anyplace, nothing else about her is there anymore either. But it is.
She’s everywhere, Wendy told him. Everywhere you weren’t.
I knew what she did mattered, he said, so quietly she almost couldn’t hear. I know how much she’s a part of you. I see it every day.
You know the difference between you and Josh? It’s like you think you’re standing in the center of the universe, and all that matters is what you want. You probably can’t even imagine how it is to love a person the way my mom loved me, and how Josh loved my mom, and how he’s loving me now, which isn’t about what might be best for him. He loved me so much he let me go, just because he thought that might be what I needed at the time. Same way Carolyn loved her baby enough to give him away, and Alan loves his son so much that he drives an hour each way every week to watch him put laundry in the dryer, knowing he won’t even get a hug back.
I know I’ve been a selfish person most of my life, Garrett said. But I honestly thought it would be a good thing for you to come out here with me.
As it turned out, you were right, she said. Quieter now. It was a good thing.
So now you know me, he said. Including all the worst parts. Fair enough. The thing is, I’m not the same person I was when I left your mother and you the way I did. I’m not even the same person I was three months ag
o.
The whole time she’d been talking, she could feel the beating of her heart. Much faster than usual. Her face was hot. For a few moments, she was actually trembling, though her voice had remained steady.
She was starting to calm down at last. Her breathing was regular again. Looking at him now, across the table, she felt an odd and surprising desire to rest her hand on his arm. He looked so sad. She didn’t want to keep hurting him. She only wanted him to know how it had been, not just for her but for her mother, too.
I wish I’d been a better father all these years, he said.
She was silent for a moment.
You’ve been doing better lately.
I didn’t know what it was going to be like, he said. All this time, I stayed away partly because I was just so sure I’d screw up.
The staying away was the screwing up, she told him.
I’m not experienced at this, he said. I guess I was kind of proud of myself for calling Josh. It seemed like such a take-charge thing to do, which isn’t even like me.
I wish I could apologize to your mother, he said. I can understand why she would have been angry. She had every right. And I apologize to you for thinking it would be okay to decide how things should go without even talking to you about it.
Thanks.
Another minute went by. The waiter, who had stayed clear of their table for the last many minutes, had set the bill on their table now.
One good thing anyway, said Garrett. I can see no man is ever going to mess with you. I’m really glad of that, because there’s always plenty ready to try.
He set some money on the tray. Let’s get out of here, he said.
It was raining when they got outside. He took his jacket off and wrapped it around her.
You may need to skip school one more time, he told her. It’s the other part of your birthday celebration. I’m taking you to Yosemite.
The Usual Rules Page 34