by Sarah Relyea
Curt was clenching his jaw.
“He has a job in Los Angeles. That means we’ll be moving there—once we can get things arranged.”
Alice had never seen Ginger and could not imagine her as a family member. Charles had shown up once. Her mother’s words seemed meaningless: a story peopled by strangers. Who could say how they’d feel about her and the problems she’d just made?
Her mother’s eyes were bold, buoyed by her growing command. “As you may remember, Charles has two sons. They live with him, so you’re going to have new brothers. We’re hoping everyone can get along.”
Curt made a snuffling sound; he was crying. He’d said nothing so far—nor had her father. Her mother was in charge, it seemed; she’d found more courage than the men. Alice felt a laugh burbling up; with a gasp, she managed to stifle it.
SHE’D BEEN FEELING less confused since the announcement, because it was clear that things would be changing. Her world had become unmanageable: scary, how wrong things had gone before coming around. A new beginning would be a good thing. On the other hand, the changes could prove overwhelming. For one thing, Charles and Ginger would be judging her—now, just when she’d broken so many rules. They knew nothing of her, only her faults. Yet they would have power over her life; they would make new demands, and unless she found ways of appeasing them, they would become her enemies—or worse, push her out. Then where would she go, how would she keep from being destroyed? She was through with Telegraph Avenue; she’d seen enough runaways to know she’d never get through that world as the same girl—or as anyone.
Her father would be moving soon. Meanwhile, he was coming and going as he pleased and sleeping in the spare bedroom. He’d been showing up for dinner, as before, but gulping the meal and then closing himself in the spare room.
Sounds came from the landing; he’d just come in. He passed her door, pausing and glancing in. She lay on the rug, scanning one of her mother’s books—Nana, a novel by the Frenchman Zola. Though she ignored the glance, she could feel her father’s presence weighing on her as he moved off.
Her mother had recommended Nana. Lately, she’d begun supervising her daughter’s reading, prodding and suggesting. Scanning the pages of Nana, however, Alice was unnerved by the book and by her mother’s message in offering it—the ugly story of a young streetwalker who rose from the gutter by performing on stage as the Blonde Venus, and then proceeded to destroy the men who pursued her. The story made Alice feel a sense of horror and death; she wondered why her mother found her in need of the warning, if warning it was.
As Alice was pondering her mother’s stratagem, a loud rap came on her door. Feeling caught, she continued reading; when she finally glanced up, her parents were coming through the doorway together. They leaned close together; her mother’s face was pale, as though they’d come to announce a death.
“You’ve read enough for now,” she sighed, her hair loose around her scowl, her eyes flashing with drama. “We need your response—and please be truthful.”
They’re in agreement again, thought Alice, closing the book; they have another bombshell.
“Yes?”
“Do you hear me?” Her mother demanded, sharply.
“Yes. What’s wrong?”
Her mother’s face contorted. “You’re stealing money from your father!”
Alice was dumbfounded. “What?”
“Oh!” came her mother’s cry. “How could you do such a thing?”
Alice was trembling. “But I never—”
“You’re lying!”
“No, I’m not!”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
Her mother’s eyes were tearing. “Why would my daughter steal a hundred dollars?” she muttered, shaking her head.
“A hundred dollars?” The sum was large—more money than Alice had ever seen.
“Yes!”
“What for?”
“Drugs,” came her father’s stony response.
“Drugs?”
“Yes, marijuana!” her mother snapped.
“I would never—”
“Oh! She’s lying!”
Alice’s pulse was racing, jolted by the baffling accusation. If drugs were the concern, why accuse her of stealing? Or could they suppose she was planning on selling the stuff and needed some seed money? She eyed them, wondering what the real charges could be.
“I’ve smoked marijuana.” She would come clean, more or less, and maybe they would be persuaded. “But I’ve never bought any. And I never stole any money from you.”
“Someone else, then? Who?” her father demanded, colorless and contemptuous.
“How would I know?”
“Well,” her father shrugged, “you would know, if anyone would.”
Alice could feel her face reddening. Her lawyer father was sure she’d done the deed as charged.
“Yes,” her mother added, “you’ve been marauding around with your group. Who knows, maybe they broke in while everyone was away.”
“They’ve never come here.”
“So you say—but how can we be sure?”
“And I don’t even see them anymore.”
“Well, that’s some comfort,” her mother sighed, as her father began moving off. “Come down for dinner, then. Everyone’s here.”
Alice looked away.
“Come down—now,” her mother commanded. “We’re having our last dinner together before your father leaves.”
Then she closed the door.
Alice closed her book and went down, feeling shaken. The others were there. Her mother’s face had softened, and she put Alice to work cleaning spinach.
As Alice was rinsing the spinach, she heard Curt say, “Were you on Telegraph on Monday?”
“No. Why?”
“One of the black guys from school says he saw what’s-her-name.”
“Who?”
“That girl who’s always hanging around Telegraph—Valerie.”
“So what?”
“Gary says if you’re hanging with her, you’re a whore and a dope dealer.”
The words hung in the room. So, guys had been groping her—and now one of them was calling her names? She glanced around, wondering why her mother and father were playing deaf and dumb, but there was no response.
Curt was smirking as though he’d made a good move. So, he’d probably been on Telegraph with Gary. Maybe Curt was using drugs—and he was clearly stealing. One day he’d come home bragging how he and Sammy had found twenty dollars near the bank. Her mother had heard him bragging and scoffing and must have known he was lying. But now that her father’s money was missing, they were accusing her.
“You and Gary go there, same as Valerie,” she said, glaring. “You’re stealing money and blaming me. Now leave me alone.”
“Alice! What’s wrong with you?” Her mother’s face was red.
“He’s the one, and you’re blaming me.”
“She’s the one hanging around on Telegraph,” Curt said with a scowl, as though he would punch someone.
“We’ve asked both of you,” her mother argued, “and no one can say where the money is. How should we proceed, then, if you’re both blameless? As for you, Alice, we have no idea where you’ve been going or what you’ve been doing, and you’re clearly never going to say.”
“I never go to Telegraph anymore,” Alice responded.
“Maybe. I hope so.”
“And anyway, everyone else goes there.”
“We’re grown-ups,” her mother responded flatly. “We can choose where we go. And when you come with us, we can make sure you’re not running wild. Anyway, you’re the one who’s smoking grass. That’s why we assumed you’d be stealing money.”
Curt chimed in, “Gary says Valerie’s a dope dealer.”
Her mother’s eyes rounded, aghast. “How wrong I was about Dan Dupres!” she cried. Then she peered at Alice. “Are you buying drugs from her?”
“No.”<
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“Oh, yeah,” Curt scoffed.
“Maybe you and Gary are buying drugs,” Alice responded. “Maybe you stole the money, same as before, when you and Sammy found some money by the bank. Or so you claimed.”
Curt was seething. “She’s way out of control,” he informed them coolly. Then he ducked from the room.
“Alice?” her mother probed. “What’s going on?”
“I’m not a criminal.”
“I know. But who—” Her words faded.
Though in a rage, Alice forced herself to be calm. Her father would be leaving soon, and she needed to see clearly how the cards were falling. She’d done enough bad things—enough for Charles and Ginger to throw her to the wolves. And now would they hear even worse? Her own mother and father might forgive her—but what about these strangers? She would be leaving Berkeley; there would be other chances if she could only hold on and keep cool. In the meantime, she would have to comply. But complying was one thing; accepting false charges was another. Curt had been eager to accuse her. Given everything that had happened to her and could go on happening, in school and elsewhere, his slander was unforgivable.
Part IV
fire in bohemian grove
chapter one
Alice
HER FATHER’S SATURDAYS were no longer hushed up; everyone knew he was in Marin, riding horses with Ginger. By mid-June, he had moved from the house on Forest Avenue to a rented room nearby; how strange, then, that Alice should know more than when he’d been sleeping in the spare bedroom, or before. Now he showed up for parenting duty sunburned and unburdened, in cowboy boots and smelling of horses. Her mother had known for months, or so she informed Alice, who blamed herself for having been fooled, for never bothering to imagine, even after she’d found the cowboy gear in a cellar cupboard. For months she’d been wandering in her own world; now she learned what everyone else already knew.
“I never supposed he would find a horsewoman,” her mother had begun by saying, when they found themselves alone, in the shadow of the announcement.
Her mother was equally changed—warm and gushing, unless something happened to remind her of Tom; then she would say things Alice had never heard before, about how unhappy they’d been together. It was a whole new image of her family, as a place that had never been good, rather than one that had gone suddenly bad. In any case, the family had come to an end. The past was crumbling in her mind; the house in Washington had concealed something bad, a room full of unpleasant ghosts that rushed forward, overwhelming her memory. As she now learned, nothing was the way she remembered.
Her mother had found new concerns: Charles and the boys. She prepared Alice for what was coming by informing her of these new people, who they were and how she should feel about them once they were gathered under one roof—the following summer, once the arrangements had been made. Alice was leery of her mother’s monologues, because she should be choosing for herself. But no; the new people would be her family, replacing the old one, only offering more, her mother assured her—for there were so many things her father had been unable to do, and Charles could do them all.
Hearing her mother’s rambling monologue, Alice knew there was no saying what these changes would mean; she would have to see. For now, her father had abandoned her world, her mother was in love, and Charles had not yet appeared. She would have to save herself.
There was the sense of a lessening burden, now that her mother was no longer always angry or sleepy—angry over some household problem that had never troubled her before; sleeping away the afternoons and emerging to pull together some dinner. There was an unaccustomed new glow and a dreamy face, spreading warmth. Even so, Alice had no power over her mother’s moods and had done nothing to change them; that was spurred by someone else, the newcomer Charles. She was merely sensing the change, as some manner of bystander to a joyous turn of events far beyond her comprehension. Father and mother were madly in love, though not with each other, of course; confused by the feeling of overhearing someone else’s good fortune, Alice understood that what her parents had shared had never really been love, but some barely preserved tolerance.
Now there would be the future.
She would be free of her father; maybe her world would change. She was bad for wanting any such thing. But he had some share of the blame, now that he was leaving her, or them—for she was no longer alone. Tom’s abandonment bound the others together. There was an odd reassurance in hearing her mother complain about how he’d refused her an ice-cream cone on their honeymoon; hardly pausing, her mother would then announce that a man always favored a daughter. For Alice, some hope clung to the idea, followed by the foreboding that he would become a stranger. The sudden absence was oddly wounding—there would be a yearning to know the stranger, where he had gone and what he was doing. For now, though, she was glad he was away and would know nothing of her. Surely none of them approved of her.
Her father’s room was near the Rayson house, on a street whose name Alice could never remember, though her mother referred to it carefully, as a place of meaning or permanence. But her father would never stay long in a cramped second-floor room having only a desk and a single bed, not even a rug—a less welcoming space than the spare room on Forest Avenue, though of course he was free of them. The purpose was clear enough.
As her mother observed from the car, her father’s doorbell—camouflaged among faded wood shingles—sounded a faraway chime. The small and weather-beaten house seemed to Alice as though the one on Forest Avenue had been hurled up and flung down by whirling helicopters, losing scale in the process. She’d seen the place only once before, on her mother’s demand; her mother had been arguing on the phone when she snapped, “The children should know where you’re living, Tom,” and ended the call. Alice had never pleaded to see the room, yet true enough, it pressed on her world as a fantasy. And so there’d been an impromptu jaunt with her father alone—her brother had been playing ball somewhere—for a glance at the room and then back to Forest Avenue, with barely a grunt from her father. She’d been hoping for more—a glimpse of a world belonging to him. Problem was, everyone knew he was already more or less living with Ginger.
Now her father was being rounded up once more on her behalf, as they headed to the Parnassus Road home of a man named Joel Cohen, who ran a school. Joel was another Harvard man. Sabrina Patterson’s daughter Helen had been enrolled in Joel’s school for a year already, and according to Sabrina, he had made up for Michael’s absence. Now Michael was planning on spending several more months in the Amazon, and though Helen was coping badly, Joel’s program was a wonderful help; the girl was performing theater, keeping a journal, reading Sartre and R. D. Laing. Alice’s mother was so impressed by what she’d heard that she was considering enrolling her. The program was funded by the public schools and therefore free, and it was intended for very independent students—that was her mother’s story. For herself, Alice was unsure whether she should enroll with a handful of others in some newfangled thing. So much was changing already, and she longed for something that worked—though the junior high, of course, would only be more of the same.
On the other hand, she needed a new group to replace Joe, Valerie, and Jim. The school had fewer than one hundred students, nearly all of them older; that would be challenging. Though she enjoyed the thought of being among students her brother’s age, it would be sad to lose her own peers—Tammy and the other girls. But if anything new were to happen, she would have to be open. She would gladly be free—not of her peers, but of so many other things.
Joel had to approve any new student for the school, known as Other Paths Open Academy; for that, the Raysons had been summoned to Parnassus Road.
Her father appeared at the door, sunburned and wearing a black cowboy shirt and new bell-bottomed jeans. Only the worn baseball cap was familiar, though even that had changed in some absurd way, like cheap Halloween gear, sideburns draping from the edge. Bland and barely nodding, he closed the door with a
slam, and they returned to the car.
Her mother was driving; that was the oddest part. Of course her mother drove nearly every day, just not when her father was in the car. Now he climbed into the back seat, while Alice remained in front. It was a strange game of musical chairs, with everyone in the wrong place, a place belonging to someone else. Saying hardly a word, they ascended the hill and parked on Parnassus Road, a narrow sloping lane leading to a dead end. For a moment they gathered by the curb, gazing over roofs and trees on a gleaming world. The house lay below, snuggled at the end of a steep path. The Raysons filed down the steps; her mother sounded the gong. Soon the door opened on a sun-splashed room. Joel Cohen, young and beaming, moved to reveal the sunscape, as though they’d come for that alone.
Though Joel and her father had gone to the same college, they were nothing alike. Alice had imagined Joel as bland, probing, deadpan; he was none of those things. Shaggy dark curls tumbled over an open collar; he wore sandals and a long strand of beads. Pale and chubby, he surveyed them, barely concealing a wave of humor that pursed the boyish mouth. For a moment, the men faced off, then with a purr of welcome, Joel ushered them through the door. They found themselves in an airy space overlooking a gleaming scene of the San Francisco Bay. Together they gazed on the day’s closing glory. Wispy orange and lavender clouds laced the sky in anonymous gesture; gray shards glimmered on the bay. Fog poured through the Golden Gate, spreading over San Francisco and Marin.
Turning from the glow, Alice found several large beanbags gathered around a low glass table like frogs by the edge of a pond, amorphous shapes facing everywhere or nowhere.
From another room she heard squealing, as a toddler came running toward them through the doorway. Encountering Tom’s uncompromising knee, the child paused in confusion and gazed up, laughing. Then she found Joel, grasping her father’s leg in both hands, ready to shinny up in search of welcoming arms. “Come here!” she squealed.
“Can’t you see I’m busy, Isabel?” he cajoled as she hung from Daddy’s thumb. “Here, we have something for Ruth.”