Читать книгу Small Acts of Sex and Electricity - Lise Haines - Страница 7

I don’t get many clear messages about the future. No crawls at the bottom of my mental screen. I would make a terrible oracle. But sometimes I know things. I knew when Franny was hit by the train. Well, I didn’t know that it was a train that took her out, but I knew she was out of life. And when you get that kind of sporadic but intense signal, it’s hard to understand how you can miss the obvious things. I missed things with Jane. I should have seen she would take off.

Two weeks before she drove away in the Jaguar, she had phoned me in Chicago. She asked if I’d go through the estate with her. We had lost Franny six months earlier, in the winter, so I had already gone out to California for the funeral. When Jane called, I was getting ready for an off-hours interview, hoping to pick up a gig in an auction house. Afterwards, I had plans to meet friends at a pub. I had been out of work for a while. It was a particularly bad time to make a second trip.

—You’re it, she said, as if we were playing a child’s game.

—I know a great appraiser in LA: Tony. Tony has four brothers and they’re all appraisers and they’d probably all come up to the house just to see it and . . .

—Things will go quickly, she said.

—I guess anything’s possible, but . . .

—I don’t want five guys named Tony.

—No, they’re . . . I know plenty of others. Some of the best.

—But that’s what you do, you go through stuff. You’re an expert.

I didn’t say: That’s like assuming you’re willing to mutilate yourself because you sell knives for a living.

Jane knew I didn’t want to be the one to break up Franny’s house. It had always been my catch basin, safe landing. Jane’s relationship with her grandmother had been held together by friction, and though no one ever said this, though no one fully implied it, Jane was blood and I was stray. And this created a particular sense of order.

I urged someone who would know West Coast values. Then I stood in the middle of my loft in Chicago, held the receiver against my ribs and with one hand hoisted a window open for air. The huge, original frames had been hauled up on a winch and set in place when it had been a button factory. They rode to the top with ease. I looked at the rain hitting my sill, the way it sprinkled the black skirt I wore and the hardwood floor, the spray red from the tail-lights going by. The rush-hour traffic headed from the Loop, the cab late. I put the tiny holes of the receiver to my ear again, looked at the unlit neon signs mounted on my walls. All she wanted was a week of my time.

—You still on the line? she asked.

—Sure.

—Mike and the girls will be there.

I was getting soaked.

—We can do a farewell party to the old place and you can drive the Jaguar while you’re out. . . .

I knew that one of Franny’s neighbors went over to the house weekly to start the motor and inspect the radiator fins flaking off in the salt air. I had always liked that car, and hoped Franny had had a rash moment and left it to me.

From my door-sized windows, I saw the taxi drive up and back, apparently struggling to find my address. But I’d never be able to change and get to the interview in time.

—This will probably be the last chance to be at Franny’s. Nan wants to rent it out until it sells.

No one liked Nan.

—You have to get the art out first, I said.

—That’s why we need you, to tell us that kind of thing. Did I say Mona asked about you? And Livvy. I think she’d like your company right now.

I doubted she had asked for me.

—Just for a weekend, to get you started, I said. Three days. Four at the most.

—I found a pretty good ticket online. But you’ll have to show a medical illness to back out. No refunds.

A few days later, at O’Hare, I ate a green banana, cottage cheese, and two rubbery eggs from a vending machine before the plane boarded. But I had some of my father’s genes, so I couldn’t make myself sick.

......

When I arrived at the Santa Barbara Airport, I chose a subcompact rental. Jane had offered to pick me up, but you have to have your own car in Southern California or you quickly become a dependent. I felt uneasy as I loaded my bags, and I decided to hold off going straight to the house.

Instead I took a detour to Mountain Drive, up in the foothills. I pulled over on a narrow turnout where I could see the city, the cemetery, a large avocado orchard, the marine layer sitting on the beach, the unlimited sky. The chaparral grows up the steep embankment, castor bean digs in everywhere. I thought of times I had spent with Jane: the joint passed across someone’s hot tub, the temperature gauge dropped back into the water. Ease, or something that once felt like ease.

I put the hand brake on and listened to the radio, wondered if I could put the battery at risk that way and stall out there permanently. When that didn’t happen, I went down the hill and drove through the grounds of the Miramar Hotel, past the tennis courts and swimming pools we used to invade. The roofs of the Miramar were still that insane blue, like an advertisement without words: neon poured into shingles. Here. Stay here. The restaurant train car had a new seating area outside with white canvas umbrellas. People were lined up, waiting for tables. I circled round and turned onto San Ysidro Road, past the craftsman-style church. Jacaranda blossoms parachuted along the railroad ties and drifted over to the beach. It made me laugh to see the small purple flowers descend through the air, as if a drama had been saved up to greet me. I punched in the code to the gate and drove through. Then I sat for a while, my car in idle, taking in salt air like an overload of memory. Each summer I’d almost forget what that was like, an intrusion of ocean sound that builds and tears down other sounds until it disappears entirely.

I parked behind the garage. It was the only house that still had one. Years ago the buildings had been spaced apart and there had been some open parking. But all the additions, the desire to cram more in, had pulled them together like row houses. I unloaded the car.

Jane answered the door that day. She seemed confused by my presence, though we had gone over our flight schedules together two nights before. She was thinner than the last time I had seen her, her hair pinned back with tiny butterfly clips, several of which had come loose, as if they were trying to get away from her head. She stepped back into the hall and caught her foot on the cord of a belly board leaning by the door.

—Goddamn it.

Mike stood in the middle of the living room, knee-deep in luggage. He was bare except for his khaki shorts and a pair of battered flip-flops. He smiled when he saw me staring at him. Jane untangled herself. She kissed me on the mouth. I heard the girls upstairs. Mike took my two bags, kissed my mouth as well, and threw on a t-shirt. Jane asked about my flight and if I were thirsty.

—I wouldn’t mind a drink.

Mike put his arm around my waist.

—You’re insane for doing this, he said.

—That’s me.

—How was the flight? Jane asked a second time.

—Direct, I said.

—And the most interesting person you’ve spoken with in the last twenty-four hours? Mike asked.

—The Hertz rental agent?

—The next twenty-four will improve, he said.

—The hotel’s been purchased by foreign investors. They’re going to do a major remodel, make it more of a resort, Jane said.

—Sorry to hear it, I said.

As if she were coming out of a stupor, Jane suddenly offered me something to drink again. But shortly after I said yes, I was thirsty, she looked around, as if she had forgotten something, and then dropped onto the couch. My patience felt like a third suitcase I couldn’t put down. Mike made me a Campari and soda. When I think back on that afternoon, I realize they were like two people with broken whisper phones in a science exhibit. They barely made eye contact with one another.

Finally Jane went off to the kitchen and Mike pushed a handful of dolls in various states of undress to one end of the couch so we could sit.

—You okay? he asked.

—I keep expecting Franny to walk through a door. Mike rubbed my shoulders a little.

—You think the foreigners will leave the blue roofs alone?

—Not a chance, I said.

When Jane returned, I dealt with the topic I imagined she and Mike were avoiding or polarized by.

—I’ll help you work out a rough plan, I said, breaking the skin on the silence.

Jane flinched. Franny’s estate was sizable. She’d been an avid collector of fine and decorative arts. There were the collections of small objects from Africa, Greece, and Egypt; tribal masks; leather-bound books; Moroccan and Chinese rugs. A shelf of skulls: bobcat, hummingbird, pelican. Steel molds once used in making balloons were mounted on marble bases. On the coffee table, a red carnival-glass dish was filled with black wooden spools. And the Louis XIV table. Franny had impressed its existence upon Jane and her sister, Nan, and me each time we had flown into the living room instead of walking. I noted the photograph of Franny that had been framed for the funeral. She looked like one of those Avedon models from the ’50s.

—I don’t mean anything too detailed. I just need to get an idea of which items will be held out for the family. You can think about what you’d like an exact appraisal on—I’ll help you with that. And if you hope to sell by the piece or the lot. But we’ll get there, I said, opening my briefcase. I felt like a realtor or mortician giving a pitch. I don’t think they understood what it meant to settle an estate, especially one like Franny’s. The time for each appraisal, lining up buyers. And things tended to change daily where several interests were involved: the items Jane and Nan would fight over. I knew Jane would hand me the phone, expecting me to settle things between them.

I took a half-dozen yellow rule-lined pads and a box of pens from my case and set them in the middle of the coffee table so they would have them when they were ready.

—You brought office supplies from Chicago? Jane laughed. I struggled with the shrink-wrap covering the tablets. Seeing me grow flustered, she smoothed my hair as if it were flying about from static electricity. Mike gave me a sympathetic look.

It was a cool morning, but a couple of swimmers were out in the short waves now. For the first time I saw the cat lying in a corner of the room, looking dead. A small rug of an animal.

—Is Trader all right? I asked.

—I gave him too much of the tranquilizer. By mistake, Jane said. Then she picked up the box of pens and spilled them onto the table as if she were about to read a fortune with yarrow sticks. I wanted to say I miss Franny, that it seems impossible that the house will be sold, that it isn’t necessary to dump all the pens out.

I thought it was the large business of settling Franny’s estate that had them so keyed up. I’d seen this before: the sense of separation people can feel from themselves or each other when sorting the objects of the past. My boss often said you have to have a particular deficit of emotion to move freely through other people’s lives. Some families pay the auction house to go over every last thing of their relative’s. Letters, photos, spice jars, closets full of clothes, carried off in plastic bags for salvage or trash until they get down to the things they can sell. It’s a stupid way to break down, but I never wanted another career. Even if I’m left to wonder if strangers will rake through my things eventually.

Just then Mona ran down the stairs carrying one of Franny’s ivory jars from the matched set on her dressing table. She sprinkled face powder everywhere. Livvy ran after her until she saw me, then slowed to a walk and went over to look in a suitcase for something. This was the first summer she had made dramatic alterations to her appearance. The ear cuffs, the hair, the piercings, the black clothes.

Jane took the powder away.

—Hi girls, I said.

—Hi Mat, Mona said.

—Mattie, Livvy corrected her. Hey.

—Hey, I said.

She surfaced with a pink swimsuit, which she handed to Mona, who held it up so I could read the words emblazoned on the front: LOVES TO SWIM.

Mike winked at Livvy. Then he turned to me and said:

—We should invite the neighbors over for dinner tomorrow night.

He seemed eager to include me in things.

—To get in the mood? Jane said.

But I wasn’t sure which mood she referred to, and I knew she didn’t want me quizzing her, and it didn’t matter to me if we had a dinner party or not. Mike didn’t say anything, went out to the deck.

While Jane unpacked, I looked around the living room. The early-afternoon train came through heading north. It rode Franny’s house like an act of nature. A familiar door above the stove always swung partway open with the vibrations. Franny used to cut sticky-back tape into dots and squares to fasten down her sculptural pieces. The yellow, cracked adhesive patches were still in place, stuck to the bookshelves. They no longer held the objects they were intended to safeguard

As Jane searched for swim fins and Livvy and Mona robbed the linen closet of towels, I watched Mike. I thought he had given up smoking, but there was a cigarette in his mouth. He bent each match outside the matchbook cover, lit it, and waved the book until it went out. As he stood there, I was aware that the deck looked more like a container than an open platform.

The house was right on the beach and the visibility was good that day. The coast runs west to east midway between Point Conception and Port Hueneme. The ocean is due south and in the summer people prop their chairs, slather up, let their toddlers go nude, wrestle with kayaks. Kids line up their boards like Cadillac Ranch. Dogs run in packs.

It was low tide, so there were fifty feet of beach at most and coastal access for all. Of course sometimes the beach disappeared entirely and the water pounded the lower decks. A newspaper left out could turn to a bit of papiermâché stuck to a railing. The houses ranged from the substantial to the badly weathered, mostly wood framed. There was the pseudo-Spanish one of stucco, and a couple of blue-and-white nautical designs with overloaded themes.

Franny had owned her place down to the retaining wall. In winter she heaped sandbags around the pilings to keep her house from being carried out to sea. The lower deck had been rebuilt three separate times after bad storms. Flooring and carpet ripped up and replaced. Yet each summer when we arrived, her house was back in order.

I was eight when I met Jane. She was nine. My parents and I stayed at a rental a few doors down. It was always different at our house. Impermanent. Fragile. The kind of place where you could stiff a landlord on the last month’s rent.

It was important to keep everything picked up, especially between my bedroom door and the bunks, so Lois, my mother, wouldn’t trip in the dark. When she came home, she sometimes woke me to say good-night, sending out an exhaust of salt, peppermint candies, and gin as she spoke. She asked if I had spent time on my workbooks, if I had kept myself out of trouble. I said yes and yes, and when I attempted to sit up in the dark, she put a cool hand on my forehead, as if I might have a temperature.

I could make out the outline of her hair, brittle from the ocean, and I knew her lips were stung by weather. In daylight they were almost white, sometimes blistered. If she had something to say about children who hide in abandoned refrigerators or men who fall into elevator shafts, this was where she whispered to me, often drifting off and not quite finishing her stories. My mother gave me this advice: If you have to jump from a burning building, leap second. Let someone else go first. This gives the men with the nets a chance to study the wind direction and velocity.

Once she held up a piece of paper. There was a wheel in the center, my name in the upper left-hand corner, my birth date. Lois said: I talked with a woman today. And she looked at your chart. She wants you to know that something will happen around travel . . . or a car. That was it. A car will change your life. It has to do with the planet Pluto. You’re overloaded with Pluto.

While she pointed to the black ink marks, I lay still, imagining a wheel rolling over me, flattening me to sleep. You understand, don’t you? This woman knows a good deal about these things. You should hear what she said about me. Then Lois pulled herself up and receded into the hall, as if she hadn’t been there.

For years I pictured a collision that would slow traffic around me. I saw where my lungs would puncture, heard the radio I couldn’t turn off, stared at my foot impaled on the brake. I was aware that the orange reflective triangles would be placed around my car. I didn’t understand at the time that predictions swerve and take on whole other meanings. There was a car, but no accident, no death. Unless you call love an accident. I don’t.