Her shoes keep slipping on the smooth side rail, and the narrow skirt she’s wearing makes it hard to get her balance. God, if only her mind had been working that morning, she would have worn something different, more casual. Her plan had been to dress as if she’d otherwise be spending the day at a job. When she got to the hotel, though, her sister Gayle was busy zipping Olivia into her jacket and folding her socks down and putting her hair up into a ponytail. She’d hardly glanced at Tessa’s clothes. It was a good thing, too, because Tessa hadn’t gotten it right. She couldn’t find any stockings or a convincing jacket. And if she had a job, and this were really her day off, wouldn’t she just be wearing jeans and a T-shirt? But Gayle had her mind on the lecture she was going to deliver that afternoon, something about Mrs. Dalloway, and Tessa left before she could notice much of anything.
The German youths move on to another song, this one in English. Tessa doesn’t recognize it, but it has the predictable swelling cadences of a show tune. One of the teenagers beside her belts out the baritone. Olivia stares at the rows of pink and yellow houses, at the blue expanse of bay opening before them. They can see an antique sailing vessel docked near Ghirardelli Square, and the white masts of fishing boats bobbing alongside a pier. The cable car is going downhill now, mashing Olivia against the brass pole and Tessa against Olivia.
“You’re hurting me,” Olivia says.
Tessa pushes herself away, feeling the Devvie like a smooth pebble in her fist. “We’re almost there,” she says. “We can get some ice cream, okay?”
Olivia rubs a hand under her nose. “I’m not allowed,” she says. “It’ll spoil my appetite.”
“Not today it won’t. Not while you’re with me.”
Olivia gives her a skeptical look.
“I’m your adult today,” Tessa says. “I make the rules.”
At last the cable car reaches its turnaround. Tessa and Olivia get off and walk toward Ghirardelli Square, leaving the German choirboys behind. Each step sends a burning jolt through Tessa’s foot. She’ll never make it through the day in these shoes. There’s a line at the ice-cream shop entrance, of course, and they have to wait outside in the wind and the blinding sun. The other people in line are parents and children, shivering in their bright T-shirts and shorts. They’re all strangely quiet. They edge against the brick wall of the ice-cream shop, away from a man with dun-colored dreadlocks and milky eyes. Around his neck is a sign that reads, simply, AIDS. He moves in Tessa’s direction, shaking a coffee can. Tessa takes a crumpled dollar from her pocket. When the man reaches her, she drops it in his can. He grins and says, “Thank you, beautiful.” Though she’s never seen him before, something seems to pass between them, a kind of uneasy recognition. Tessa pulls Kenji’s jacket tighter around herself as the man moves off down the line.
“He smelled like pee,” Olivia says.
“You would too, if you were him,” Tessa says. It gives her a strange satisfaction to see how much this disturbs her niece. Olivia takes another look at the man and then moves behind Tessa, out of sight.
It’s another fifteen minutes before the host shows them to a booth. As soon as he leaves, Tessa slides her shoes off and tucks her throbbing feet under her thighs. Olivia seems nervous, glancing at the families in other booths, humming a tight little song to herself. Will no one quit singing? Tessa lowers her forehead onto her fist.
When the waiter comes and asks what they’ll have, Olivia shakes her head and looks down at the table. Tessa orders a hot-fudge-and-Oreo sundae for Olivia and coffee for herself. As they wait, Tessa takes sugar packets from the little ceramic sugar holder and rips them open one by one, lining them up on her napkin. She’s not thinking about it, just getting into the rhythm of it, the feeling of paper in her hands, the sound of tearing. Olivia stares at her. Tessa looks down at the row of sugars, the little nest of torn-off strips of paper. This is not normal behavior. She puts a hand in her pocket and rolls the Devvie between her fingers, thinking how easy it would be to take this one white pill. Olivia would never even notice. It couldn’t hurt anyone. In fact, she’d be worse off without it. And Olivia would be worse off. Olivia needs her to take this Devvie. Who knows what will happen otherwise?
The waitress brings the ice cream and the coffee, and Olivia seems relieved. She picks up the long spoon and lifts a delicate peak of whipped cream from the sundae. When she tastes it, she smiles and then scoops up a bite of ice cream and hot fudge. Quickly, with a feeling of inevitability, Tessa puts the Devvie on her tongue and washes it down with coffee. She takes a long breath and leans back in her chair. In a few minutes she’ll begin to feel it. She glances at her wrist where she once wore a watch. She remembers the watch, an oversized Swiss Army chronometer, and wonders how it got away from her.
Across the table, Olivia eats her ice cream with deliberation, spooning hot fudge and whipped cream with each bite. Tessa watches her, waiting for the first quickening of the drug, that flutter at the center of her chest. Soon she will be able to handle anything, including taking care of her niece, her sister’s child. She squints at Olivia, trying to imagine her as a six-year-old Gayle. But Gayle was a thin sly-eyed girl, her mouth full and pink, her hands agile. This girl is sturdy and round-faced. Pure Henry.
Oh, her brother-in-law is valiantly good, doesn’t smoke or drink; he is devoted to the study of imaginary numbers and to the building of handy gadgets. In his house, each family member’s preferred bathwater temperature is programmed into a special faucet, and the toaster oven responds to voice commands. “Black,” Tessa said, last time she visited, and the toaster complied. Henry is responsible and compassionate, a good father. Right now he’s back home taking care of Ethan, the younger child, who has the chicken pox. He’s the kind of husband who can be trusted to take care of a sick child. Tessa can almost stand him, though for a long time she wanted to kill him. Gayle had met him in college. For years Tessa felt like he was the one who’d taken Gayle away, made Gayle forget that she and Tessa were supposed to go to Barcelona when they finished school, get a tiny apartment there, teach English, go out with dark-eyed men, give the world of careers and babies and husbands a grand and permanent adiós.
Of course, if it hadn’t been Henry, it would have been someone else. Or something else. Tessa understands that now. Gayle started talking about graduate school when Tessa was still a freshman. She applied and got in right out of college. Stupidly, Tessa kept talking about Barcelona as if they might still go, as if Gayle might ditch her boyfriend and her Ph.D. in favor of a wild life in Catalonia. When Tessa was a senior herself, she asked Gayle what she was supposed to do next. She’d majored in computer programming, but she couldn’t imagine getting a normal job, working in an office. Gayle suggested that Tessa go to Barcelona and teach English, just like they’d talked about. But that wasn’t what they’d talked about, and Gayle knew it. Instead, Tessa dropped out of school and moved to San Francisco. And just look at her now.
Tessa can feel the Devvie coming on, the flush in her face that means her veins are dilating, the flutter in her diaphragm as the drug gets down to business. She can’t avert her eyes from Olivia, sated and pale, the empty ice-cream bowl in front of her. They’ll go look at the sea lions, they’ll shop for souvenirs. She can do these things.
She pays the bill and wipes Olivia’s face with a napkin, and then they’re back out into the wind and sun. The light has become brighter and hotter and she’s drinking it in like milk. Now she’s the one who’s singing, a hand-clapping song from when she and Gayle were little girls, Miss Lucy had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell. It’s a song where you say all the bad words but not really, Miss Lucy went to heaven, the steamboat went to hell-o operator, please give me number nine. . . . She and Gayle used to sing it at the top of their lungs when their father wasn’t home. She should teach it to Olivia. Behind the ’frigerator there lay a piece of glass; Miss Lucy sat upon it and broke her little ass me no more questions, tell me no more lies . . . but she can’t remember what
comes after that. And these shoes are killing her. Why is she still wearing them? She pauses to take them off, and the sidewalk is mercifully cold against her burning feet.
“You’re barefoot,” Olivia says. “You can’t go barefoot.”
“Why not?”
“You might step on glass. Or a bee. Or doody.”
“I’m not going to step on doody,” Tessa says. “Believe me.”
“You could get an infection,” Olivia says, pausing at the door of a crowded T-shirt shop. On a tall rotating stand beside the door, pink and turquoise and yellow novelty flip-flops hang on individual hooks. Tessa turns the stand, looking. Maybe Olivia is right. Maybe what she needs is a new pair of shoes.
“What do you think of these?” Tessa pulls off a pair of pink flip-flops with palm trees stenciled in black on the footbed. California Dreamin’, they say in looping script.
“You should get them,” Olivia says. “And I could get a souvenir.”
“I just got you ice cream,” Tessa says.
“I’m going to look in here,” Olivia says vaguely, and wanders inside toward a shelf of plush toys. Tessa glances at the price tag on the flip-flops: twelve dollars, but maybe they’re worth it. She goes to the register and waits in line, shifting from foot to foot, biting her nails. When she gets to the front of the line, she pays for the shoes with the twenty Kenji gave her that morning. There are still a couple of crumpled bills in her pocket. How much does she have left? Ten bucks? Fifteen? She doesn’t even want to check. She still has to buy a present for Olivia and lunch for both of them and the cable-car ride back, and her bank account is history, and her credit card won’t accept new charges ever again. The rush in her chest becomes a pounding, the beginning of panic.
Tessa takes her flip-flops and goes to get Olivia, who’s struggling with another child at the rack of plush toys. The child is a blond boy, perhaps three inches taller. He pulls a toy otter away from Olivia and holds it against his chest.
“I want that bear,” Olivia says.
“That’s not a bear,” Tessa says.
“I want him,” Olivia says, her voice low and dangerous. The boy takes a step back, holding the otter. His hair is cut like a hockey player’s, short and scruffy on top, long in back. A thin blond woman rushes toward him and grabs him by the wrist.
“Wayne Christopher,” the woman says. “You put that thing back where you got it.”
Baring his teeth at Olivia, the boy shoves the otter back onto its shelf, deep behind the other animals. His mother pulls him out of the store, scolding. Olivia goes to the shelf and digs through the animals until she’s found the otter, a glossy brown thing with deep, live-looking eyes. “I want him,” she says, holding the toy against her chest.
There’s no way Tessa can afford the otter. She’s sure it must cost fifteen dollars at least. But she doesn’t feel like arguing about it. What she wants is to get outside and put on her new flip-flops. She glances around the store and takes Olivia’s hand. Nothing is going to make her drop the otter. Tessa leads her toward the door, through a group of women in sun visors, past the racks of magnets and postcards, then out onto the sidewalk.
Olivia glances back over her shoulder toward the store. “Hey,” she says. “Stop.”
Tessa pulls her along. Without a word, they walk toward Pier 39, Tessa still barefoot, the new flip-flops in a plastic bag in her hand, the broken pumps forgotten somewhere inside the store. When they’ve gone two blocks, Tessa sits down on a bench and puts on the flip-flops. They feel so much better she wants to cry. Olivia looks down at the otter she’s still holding in her arms.
“You made me steal him,” she says.
“No, I didn’t,” Tessa says. “You stole him all by yourself.”
Olivia draws her eyebrows together. “You made me leave while I was holding him.”
“You could have dropped him,” Tessa says.
Olivia says nothing, looking down at the otter. Tessa feels a kind of triumph.
“It’s time to go now,” she says. “We have to go see the sea lions.”
“I have to put him back,” Olivia says.
“No, you don’t. You said you wanted him. Now you have him. Give him a name or something.” Tessa stands and puts a hand on the back of Olivia’s neck. “Let’s go,” she says.
“You’re pinching me,” Olivia says, squirming out of her grasp. She hides the otter under her jacket and holds it there as they make their way down the wharf.
The flip-flops do the trick. It’s crazy how much better Tessa feels. She could walk for miles, for hours. Olivia trots beside her, trying to keep up, the otter concealed beneath her jacket. She keeps glancing back in the direction of the store as if someone might still come after them. Tessa knows she should be worried about what Olivia will tell her mother, and what Gayle will believe. But she almost wants Olivia to tell her mother. It feels good to know she’s made Olivia do something her parents would punish her for. This is not right, she knows—not the way to take care of a six-year-old. There’s no time to think about it, though; the Devvie has filled her with shimmering urgency. They need to see the sea lions and think about lunch and maybe she should take a Sallie. There’s nothing quite like a Sallie after a Devvie, that lucent pink infusion that makes her almost come, every time. They’ve spent hours doing this, she and Kenji. At first it was just on Sundays in the Arboretum, but after they quit their jobs at Oracle they started doing it every day. One Devvie, then a Sallie, then another Sallie, and another Devvie. Then the feeling of each other’s bodies. It’s better than Ecstasy, cheaper than meth. She wasn’t going to do it today, not both, not even a Devvie, but now that she’s started maybe she should go ahead and take the Sallie.
Pier 39 is teeming with parents and children and teenagers and cops and vendors. There’s the smell of hot dogs, waffle cones, saltwater taffy. Above the accordion music and children’s shouts, Tessa can hear the frantic braying of sea lions. Olivia should be loving this. Instead she’s looking anxious and pinched, her hand cold in Tessa’s. They make their way down to the end of the pier, where families have gathered at the railing to watch the sea lions down in the bay. They lie on wooden floats in a protected cove, hundreds of them, molasses-brown, their glossy bodies heaped upon the floats and upon one another. They smell like elephants in the zoo. Fat with fish, they drowse in the sun or crow at the tourists, their faces small and canine. Spoiled, Tessa thinks. Tame. Hardly even animals anymore. Olivia sidles up to the railing, staring. Behind her there’s a free spot on a bench. Tessa sinks into it, stretching her legs out in the sun. It’s too hot for Kenji’s jacket now. She takes it off and holds it on her lap. She cannot close her eyes to feel the crescendo of her buzz, as much as she wants to. She has to watch Olivia.
The Devvie surges in her, flushing her cheeks, and she concentrates on the dark brush of her niece’s ponytail. Olivia’s sea-green ponytail holder matches the green edging of her socks. She is a child cared for in great detail. Tessa likes the sound of that in her mind: cared for in great detail. She wonders what Olivia would look like if she were her kid, if Tessa were the one responsible for raising her. Worse, maybe. No matching ponytail holder, no cute windbreaker. But she’d be happier, Tessa’s sure of that. She wouldn’t be worrying about everything she ate and everything she might step on and this rule and that rule. She’d be a girl, a little girl, not a tiny cramped adult.
Olivia seems completely absorbed in the sea lions now, ready to stand there at the railing for a long time. Long enough, maybe, for Tessa to do what she wants to do. She works a hand into the pocket of Kenji’s coat. There, like a promise, is the pillbox, the Sallies waiting inside. She flips the top and slides one out. The smoothness of it. The regularity of its six corners. She lays it on her tongue to taste the sweet coating before she swallows. Olivia crouches at the railing now, poking a finger through the wooden slats. Beside her, other children scream and laugh and point.
Tessa closes her eyes, letting the sun come down upon her. She
can feel the waves of the Devvie still breaking over her, the flutter in her chest that means it’s working, and it’s lovely, and it’s making her lovely and gone. The Sallie will take a little while to work, but when it does work, what joy. She will sit here and wait. She will let her niece watch those braying dogs of the sea. But she can’t sit still or get comfortable, and she can’t help thinking about what they’ll have to do next, and after that, and after that, and she can’t help thinking about Gayle back at the hotel, her sister, who seems so far from her now.
She opens her eyes. Olivia’s pulling on her hand. “Stand up,” she says.
“What is it?”
“I have to go bathroom.”
“Right now?”
In answer, Olivia presses a hand between her legs.
“Okay, okay,” Tessa says. When she stands, her vision crowds with blue sparks. She steadies herself against the bench. “We’ll find one,” she says. “Come on.”
They weave through the tourists, looking. Olivia’s mouth is pursed with the effort of holding it in. Tessa keeps forgetting what they’re looking for—not ice cream, they’ve had that, not the sea lions, not souvenirs. She sees a line of girls and women extending from a door and suddenly she remembers, but this is not the bathroom, it’s a fudge shop. She looks for signs and finds none. She asks a small woman with a broom and dustpan, but the woman shrugs and says, “No speak.” Olivia is dancing now, making urgent noises in her throat. Finally, coming around a corner, they find it: the women’s bathroom, a blue door and then a long silver cavern of stalls. Olivia breaks away from Tessa and locks herself inside one of them.
Tessa takes a stall nearby and closes the door behind her. She leans against the door, trying to slow her breathing. She doesn’t have to pee. What she wants is to feel that Sallie. If she can get it, just the beginning of it, right here alone in the stall, it will be perfect. She will receive the shock of it in her groin, the tightening heat of it in her belly. She puts Kenji’s jacket on again, trying to think about being in bed with him when this day is over. Instead she imagines Henry with his hands on Gayle. His broad white face, his small damp mouth. The chalkdust smell of him. She imagines him panting and sweating, whispering equations to stave off his orgasm.
How to Breathe Underwater Page 13