Home Safe

by Elizabeth Berg

  She stops reading, looks up.

  Helen lets out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. “That was … My goodness. Thank you. That was very powerful. Very powerful writing. What did the rest of you think?”

  Nothing, and then the murderer says, “Well, it was pretty dramatic.” Helen sees Claudia's face color. She reaches to the floor for her purse, pulls it onto her lap, and leaves it there.

  “Yes,” Helen says. “Wonderfully so, I thought. What else was it?”

  “I-I-I,” Ella says, her voice tearful, and Helen turns to her. It only goes to show that you should never assume things. She is obviously moved by what she has heard.

  “Yes, Ella?”

  “I had a dog, too. And he died!” And now she puts her hands over her face and weeps. Henry pulls out a gold pocket watch and says brightly, “Well, time to go!”

  Helen is glad he said it; it would have been hard for her to.

  The students all stand, putting on their coats, and Helen says, “Before you go, I want to give you an assignment. Next time we meet, come with two pages about a room that has great meaning to you.”

  “What room?” Ella asks, her sorrow forgotten, and Helen says, “That's up to you.” Ella stands still, contemplating this, and Helen suspects she will need to talk to her further. But first she wants to speak to Claudia.

  “Can you stay a minute?” she asks, as Claudia walks past her.

  “No, I have to go.” The woman won't look at her.

  “You will come next time?” Helen asks.

  She nods.

  “I thought what you wrote was beautiful,” Helen says. Claudia mumbles a thank-you on her way out the door, but it is as though she has been struck rather than complimented. Helen remembers a woman who had been abused much of her life telling her that almost any form of kindness or affection was very hard for her to accept. “A hug burns,” she'd said.

  “Teacher?” Ella says.

  Helen turns to her. “Yes?”

  “You have something on your nose.”

  Oh, God, how long has it been there? Helen puts her hand up to her nose and quickly wipes under one nostril, then the other.

  “You have something on your nose!” Ella says again.

  “Well, what is it?” Helen asks, wiping harder.

  “It's your finger!” Ella laughs heartily. Then her face grows serious and she puts her hand on Helen's arm. “That's my joke.”

  “Well,” Helen says. “It's very funny.” She talks to Ella a bit more about the assignment for next week, realizing even as she does that it doesn't matter if Ella does what she's been assigned. So long as Ella brings something to class, Helen will feel like Miss Brooks in the old TV show.

  She sits back down in the chair. For the first time in a long time, she feels a lifting inside. Some sense of hope, of purpose, of optimism. There is a knocking at the door and Helen looks up to see Nancy Weldon. “So how was it?” she asks. “Think you're going to like it?”

  “Very much. Far more than I expected!”

  “See? And how was Ella?”

  Helen smiles.

  “She'll settle down. She was in the last workshop, and she calmed down after a couple of sessions.”

  “I like her,” Helen says.

  “Good. So do I. Saundra and I are going across the street for a glass of wine. Want to come?”

  “I'd love to,” Helen says. “But—”

  “Don't tell me you're writing! I know you work in the mornings!”

  “No, it's … I have other plans. Maybe next time.”

  “I've got to tell you,” Nancy says, as they walk out together. “I am just so thrilled to meet both of you. Don't you love Saundra's books?”

  “I do,” Helen says. It's true that the books are fine.

  fifteen

  TESSA IS SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT OF TOM ELLIS'S CAR AND raving—excessively, in Helen's opinion—about the view from the Golden Gate Bridge. Helen is sitting silently in the backseat, her arms crossed over her chest, wishing she had an emery board in her purse, iPod plugs in her ears. Oh, she knows. She remembers all this outrageous beauty from many years ago, when she and Dan lived here. They used to occasionally drive over the bridge so that they could walk on Mount Tamalpais. After a few hours, they'd descend to the beach and watch the sun set. Then they'd go into the city and eat a cheap but delicious dinner at Sam Wo in Chinatown, and finally they'd return to their tiny apartment, which happened to be across the street from Golden Gate Park. In those days, they would sometimes dream about living in a nice house in California, Helen's homesickness for the Midwest notwithstanding, but it wasn't a possibility then. Now that it is a possibility, Helen finds that her defenses are up. She feels a kind of unwarranted fury and she's not sure why.

  She and Dan both had always loved the mix of people in Oak Park: virtually every ethnic background was represented, as were various levels of income. The village had a wonderful mix of restaurants, a beautiful library, three bookstores in one block. Yes, when she told Dan about her dream house, she had said she wanted to live in California, but it was a fantasy! She liked having fantasies, they were part of what made her a writer! But she also amended those fantasies with some regularity—had he forgotten that? When Dan commissioned this house they are headed for, did he really believe it was the best place for them to spend the rest of their lives? She stews and fidgets, fidgets and stews, looks out the window and at her watch.

  “A lot of people wanted to tear the house down,” Tom tells Tessa, as they turn off the main road. “But the owner wouldn't sell to anyone like that. She was a real feisty old lady, eighty-six years old, who was finally giving in and moving to live with her daughter in the city. But she was determined to hold on to her house until someone recognized the beauty of the place, and your dad did, in spades. She gave him a bargain because she liked him so much. The house is an original California bungalow and we kept the bones, but we really opened it up and let in the light. I think you're going to love it.”

  “I already do,” Tessa says. “It's so beautiful here!”

  Tom slows down and turns in to a driveway. “This is San Francisco cobblestone,” he says. “It used to be on the streets in the city. I had a client who did their driveway in it and there was a lot left over. They just gave it to me, so I used it here.”

  “This is so cool,” Tessa says, looking more closely at the driveway as they step out of the car, but all Helen can look at is the house. It is lovely: small, with shingle siding and a slate roof. There are large mullioned windows, and wild roses growing on trellises on either side of the front door.

  Tom holds out the key to her, and she shakes her head. “You go first,” she says.

  He unlocks the door, pushes it open, and she follows him inside, trying hard to keep a check on her emotions. What she feels, suddenly, is that she has come to see Dan. He is not here, but here he is.

  The walls are painted in pale, complementary earth-tone colors; the trim is a pristine white. The living room has a high pitched ceiling supported with closely placed joists. The walls in that space are lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. On one of the shelves are the complete works of E. B. White; on another, there are vintage children's books; and on a third shelf there are copies of her own novels. The rest is gloriously open; ready to be filled.

  There is a fieldstone fireplace, and before it are a white sofa and two white upholstered chairs. She remembers a picture in her file with furniture that looked just like this—she had wanted white furniture because her dream house would have a lot of light that would otherwise fade the furniture. Dan must have found that file, for now she sees her ideas everywhere: bamboo floors, laid so that the knuckles show. Open shelving in the kitchen with thick, cream-colored diner-style dishes, a deep double sink with a bridge faucet, an incorporated pie safe with perforated tin doors. She opens the pie safe and sees her design for spice racks, pull-out bins for pots and pans, deep drawers for table linens. There is the six-burner
stove she has lusted after for years, and a huge refrigerator—room for drinks and food at last. There is a farmhouse kitchen table that has been refitted with a recycled glass top, complete with a silverware drawer.

  “Mom! Look at this bathroom!” Tessa calls, and Helen goes into the small room that nonetheless holds everything she wanted: a shower made by water falling off a rock ledge, no curtain, no door. There is a free-standing, oval-shaped tub, built-in cabinets with many long and narrow drawers, and divided shelving above that for bath linens. She touches the cream-colored towels: exactly right. “This is all artisan tile from Sausalito,” Tom says, behind her. She nods. She can't speak. She is full of such a mix of conflicting emotions: excitement, wonder, pain, appreciation, regret.

  There is a bedroom-size closet with a place for everything, including purses. There is a three-way mirror and an upholstered stool to sit on. There are hatboxes, wire baskets for accessories, slanted shelving for shoes, even tie hangers. Behind a paneled door are a linen-lined laundry basket, a washer and dryer, and an ironing board.

  The bedroom has hand-printed, Japanese paper weave on the walls, and the room-size bed is covered by a dove-gray linen duvet. There are bookshelves and swing-out lamps built into the wall, a flat-screen television. In the ceiling are tiny lights that form the constellations of Sagittarius and Libra, her and Dan's birth signs. There are French doors that lead from the bedroom into the garden, and she pushes those doors open now and steps outside into the soft air and sunshine.

  “Tessa?” she calls. “Come out and see this garden with me!”

  “In a minute,” Tessa says. “I'm watching a hummingbird—he's right outside the window!”

  Helen follows stone steppers into the garden and then on to a small wooden shed, furnished with only a simple desk and chair, a perfect writing space modeled after E. B. White's. She stands there, taking in the view from the little window on one wall, and then sees Tom approaching. She comes back outside and closes the door behind her, already protective of this little space, not wanting anyone else to come inside.

  “Do you know the names of all the flowers growing here?” she asks him.

  “I made it my business to find out,” he says, smiling. “Let's see. You've got night-blooming orchids, freesia, dahlias, oriental lilies, lantana, penstemon, princess flowers, mock orange, jasmine—”

  “Where's the jasmine?” Helen asks; she loves jasmine.

  His face grows serious. “Are you ready?” he asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Follow me.” He heads for a live oak tree in the far corner of the yard.

  As they get closer, she sees a tree house, high up in the branches. And then, as they get closer still, she sees that it has been designed to look like a sailboat: Dan got a part of his wish after all. There is a wooden spiral staircase leading up to the boat, and Tom points to the center post, on which vines with small white flowers are growing. “There's your jasmine,” he says. “You can smell it from here.

  “Want to go up?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Want to be alone when you do?”

  She nods. “Thank you.”

  “I'll go and talk to Tessa. Take all the time you need.”

  Helen climbs the steps into what is made to look like a stateroom: there is a small bed, a table and two chairs, porthole windows. She takes the ladder staircase up three steps to the upper deck. Here is a bow with two teak deck chairs. There is a mast, on which is anchored a sail made from handkerchief linen; it flutters in the wind, and the sound is lovely. She stands still, listening, and feeling the tears she has kept at bay until now start down her cheeks. She walks to the other end of the boat, to the stern, where she finds a ship's wheel. She puts her hands to the polished wood and steers this way and that, wondering about the kinds of things she and Dan might have talked about up here. A friend of hers who had little boys once told her about how her father was building a tree house for them. “Oh, fun, what all are you putting in it?” Helen asked. “Nothing,” her friend said. “It's not the things you have in a tree house, it's the things you think about there.”

  Helen goes back down below and sits at the little table. Champagne, they would have had, their first night here. Joy. She looks out the window at the house; she can see Tessa and Tom through the window; she can hear the sound of their laughter.

  She cannot live here. Every day here without Dan would tear her heart in two.

  “If you don't want to live there, let me!” Tessa says. They are sitting in a small Indian restaurant near their hotel recommended by the concierge, and the meal was indeed quite good. Now they are lingering over mango ice cream, and Helen tries once more to explain to Tessa why she wants not to live in the house, but to sell it.

  “I know it's beautiful; I know it's utterly unique, but it would be so hard for me to live there without Dad. And think about what we'd be giving up if we left Chicago.”

  “I don't think of it that way,” Tessa says. “I think of how living here would open up my life!”

  “You can't afford to live here alone,” Helen says. “Do you know what the taxes are on that place? You'd be paying more than double what you are now, just for taxes! And then you'd have bills, besides.”

  “I know that, but I would be able to afford it. I could get a second job.”

  “Jobs are very hard to come by in this area—everyone says that.”

  “And what's that rah-rah speech you've given me a thousand times? Forget about statistics; when it comes to the individual, it's zero or one hundred percent. And anyway, I could get a roommate.”

  “No, you couldn't.” Helen answers so swiftly she astounds herself; she doesn't even know where that answer came from.

  “Why not?” Tessa asks, and twin spots of pink appear on her face; she is angry.

  “This house is not a dormitory.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean that it's very special; it needs to be treated in a certain way.”

  “Right. Good thing you're going to sell it, since it's so very special.” Tessa's voice is loud, now.

  Helen looks around the little dining room. No one seems to be paying attention to her and Tessa, but the couple at the table next to them are acting a little too nonchalant.

  “Keep your voice down,” Helen says, quietly.

  Tessa leans forward over the table to say, “Did it ever occur to you that the decision is mine, too? He was my father. I would like to live in a house that my father built.”

  Helen stares at her daughter. What she wants to say is “Built for him and me, Tessa, not for you.” But her daughter has a point. She says, wearily, “Let's talk about this tomorrow. I'm exhausted. At home, it's midnight.” She signals for the bill, and they wait for it in silence.

  That night, while Tessa sleeps, Helen lies awake. In her mind, she walks through the rooms of the house again and again.

  Being in the place was almost more than she could take in. She felt as though she were looking directly at things yet not quite seeing them. People talked about dream houses, but this really was a dream of a house, made real for her by Dan. But Dan is no longer here, and her life is in Chicago. In addition to that, she needs to live somewhere where she can walk to stores and restaurants and parks and public transportation and movies and the library; she never wanted to live somewhere where she would be dependent on a car for such things. She thinks, too, that she probably really does need the seasons, their lessons of birth and rebirth, the rich variety they offer, even when the offering is a freezing day full of howling winds and driving snow. For every nasty day, there are many more that can break your heart with their shy beauty; nothing so ostentatious as California's beauty, no. In the Midwest, the beauty is quieter, but realer, somehow—it grounds her. And her house there is the one that Dan did live in rather than the one he was going to live in; this means more to her than she can say.

  She peers over at Tessa, wild in sleep as always, her covers
tangled around her. She knows her daughter as an intelligent and responsible person, but she doesn't really believe Tessa is ready to take on the responsibility of a house, and Helen doesn't want the responsibility of two. She stares up at the ceiling and quietly sighs. Maybe the next writing assignment she gives her group should be for them to write a piece on this theme: a great gift you are given backfires.

  In her mind, she goes around the table they sit at, seeing all her students' faces. When she gets to Jeff Daley, she nearly gasps. She knows he's single and “between relationships;” she heard him tell Claudia that he'd been broken up with his girlfriend for a while. She'll invite him to dinner with Tessa and her. Naturally she is thinking that the rest of the story is that they become an item and Tessa decides the hell with California. Naturally she knows the odds are against this. Naturally she decides she will try anyway. In the morning, she will tell Tessa that they both need more time to think. That she will not sell the house right away, she will hold on to it for a few more months and then they can decide.

  She thinks now that she can sleep. She can sleep and tomorrow they'll have sourdough toast with their breakfast before they head home. The little house will wait there: magical, glorious, unclaimed. She doesn't want to live there. But she's really not ready to sell it yet, either, how can she?

  Oh, Dan, she thinks. In a way, it's the Monkey again. Years ago when she and Dan were in an art gallery, Helen had admired the whimsy shown in an artist's conception of a monkey turned butler. It was a four-foot-high statue and the monkey was dressed in a little suit, holding a tray, and he was remarkably lifelike: his curled-back lips, his hairy feet. For her birthday, Dan bought the monkey for her. She hadn't wanted it; she had simply admired it. She didn't know how to tell Dan that, so for some time she kept the thing up in their bedroom, off in a corner. She and Midge started calling any gift they found inappropriate a monkey. One day Dan overheard her talking to Midge on the phone, saying, “Well at least she didn't give you a monkey,” and the jig was up. She was afraid he'd be hurt, but he was fine; he told her to return it and get something else. But he was alive then. When someone has died, it's a lot harder to get rid of something they gave you—everything has terrible value. Helen thinks that's why her mother used to say she was going to have a garage sale to end all sales—she said it and said it but never got around to doing it. She doesn't say it anymore. It would be impossible to stack her father's alpaca sweaters on some card table for strangers to rifle through now, when everything is so uncertain. And if—when—he dies, how to do it then? Helen thinks if anyone picked up anything belonging to her father at a yard sale, she'd snatch it from their hands. And then do what with it?