Digging Out (17 page)

We are quiet for a long time as we eat her rellenos. She talks about her new work aiding elderly people in need, many of them Alzheimer’s patients.

“I think I’ve finally found a place for myself in the world.” She seems calm and happy. How lovely to be so content alone.

I raise my glass. “I love you, Elizabeth.”

Back in L.A., I sort through the stack of mail waiting for me and discover a letter from Mam. It could only mean trouble. I haven’t had a letter from her since Gram died. Of course I knew Gram was dying. We continued writing to each other since our first letters after I’d left Wales. A month before Hannah was born, I’d had a letter saying she felt she was “on to greener pastures.” I’d wanted to see her, desperately, and actually bought a plane ticket. But in the end my doctor said absolutely not. I was too close to delivery.

In her last letter, she’d written:

I felt Gram’s death. In the middle of the night I awakened and sat bolt upright. Marc awakened and tried to comfort me. “Gram has gone. I’m sure of it.” And then I felt her with me, Marc’s hand,
suddenly hers. He turned over, closer to me. Before long I was fast asleep again. Mam’s letter arrived a few days later.

This time there is no premonition. With Mam’s recent letter in my back pocket I walk out to the deck. If it’s bad news, I want to have the Pacific Ocean in my view. The warm sun makes me glad to be in southern California, even alone. On this quiet morning, hummingbirds cluster at both feeders, a red-tailed hawk circling above the Torrey pines.

This past year I felt like I had disappeared, just as I felt when I moved from Aberfan. In those first months here in Santa Monica I was so utterly depressed. The obstetrician assumed the depression was caused by my fluctuating hormones. But I knew it wasn’t the baby moving in me causing the weepiness, the constant metallic taste in my mouth, the hole at my core. It was all of my past losses. When Marc died, it felt the same. I was no one again.

Perhaps Elizabeth is right. Maybe I will have the chance now to make myself up anew.

I shrug and take the letter out of my pocket.

Since I’d left Wales, the closest I had ever come to going home—besides the time just before Gram died—was while Marc and I were in Ireland staying near the Rosslare Harbor. He was working on a film. Over breakfast one morning he said, “I looked at a map, and you know, it’s a straight shot on the ferry to Fishguard. We could rent a car, drive up to Aberfan.”

I didn’t look at him. We’d had an agreement. I’d said no conversation about my parents. Back then, he knew I couldn’t handle reminders of home; my contact with Beti was the one exception.

Later that morning while hiking to the top of an overlook, I could see the tip of Wales. In a flash some part of me unlocked, and light—through a crack not more than a keyhole’s worth—moved in. When I returned to the hotel I dialed Mam and Da up. I let it ring three times, my heart wild, before I carefully put the receiver back in its cradle.

This is our dream house. The house we had bought, big enough for grandchildren. Marc’s and my fourth and now last house together. Our beautiful canyon. The view is broken only by the towering old redwood tree planted long before Marc and I bought the house. It stands rooted, taller than anything else in our garden. How many times have I looked at that tree and wondered how it felt to be the only redwood for many miles? The people who built the house had terraced the garden and planted some of every kind of tree that grows well in California. Torrey pines, a stand of scrub oak, eucalyptus, a birch, a sycamore, a gingko, orange, grapefruit, lemon, avocado—the California woods. But it is this one tall redwood that is my towering strength. That tree has heard my poetry and helped me hold my tears.

I make my way down the narrow back steps into the heart of the garden where the azaleas are falling off their bloom, seven different kinds. At one time I knew all their proper names. Now I don’t remember any of them, but I can smell the huge purple ones whose blossoms look like babies’ hands and bleed when I break the flower from their stems. Their sweet smell permeates the whole garden. Walking among them, I pull the dead leaves and wilted flowers and push them into the pockets of my trousers. I love this garden. I planted a good portion of the flowering plants just after we bought the house.

“Alys, the house is a wreck. Leave the garden alone for now.” Marc was exasperated. We’d bought the house—a “handyman special”—and planned to renovate everything before we moved in. Marc wanted my attention inside. But even before we closed, I’d come over with my hoe, saw, hackers and shears. I cleared out all the dead plants and pulled shrubs and bushes up by the roots, piled them
high. I’d cut back the ferns and the vinca to nothing, torn out the dead cactus and ivy by the roots. I’d pruned the orange and lemon trees myself.

“Come on, Alys,” Marc begged. “What about Hannah’s room? What about our bedroom? Our offices? We aren’t going to live out here, Alys.” In the end, Marc gave up and joined me. He’d put in a small rose garden and two pepper trees at the far end of the property.

Had I ever seen Da ill? I can’t remember he’d ever had so much as a sleep in, even during his bouts of catarrh. He was always up and out by the time I’d started off to school. Even after the disaster. Even on the weekends, he sometimes worked the night shift. I’d find him in the kitchen, early morning, leaning against the table, drinking his cup of tea and reading the newspaper by the back door, all six foot of him bent over it. He’d look up and smile at me. “Alys, you’re up early.”

Now I run down the narrow garden path, faster and faster, the wind pushing me. I grab the redwood and hang on. I want my da.

Later that day while I am going through Marc’s desk, my nerves still jagged, my mind full of the past, the phone rings.

“Hello,” I say, hoping it is Elizabeth. Knowing her incredible power of telepathy, I’d thought about calling her just after I read Mam’s letter.

“Alys?”

Oh, Jesus, it’s Gabriella. I consider hanging up. In fact, my arm is in motion.

“Don’t hang up, please,” she says.

Caught. “Gabriella,” I say slowly.

“Thank you,” she pauses, catching her breath. “I have wanted to speak with you ever since Marc …”

Her voice is so full-bodied, so genuine, it is like she is standing in the same room with her hand on mine. I soften for a moment, then remember her relentless harassment of Ed and her messages on my answering machine.

“I’ve not had a soul to talk to, except Phillipe, and he’s never been terribly behind us, as I’m sure you know. Now he says he feels squeezed in the middle.”

In my darkest moments, I have imagined Philippe pushing Marc full force to take the Brazilian leap to love, abetting their connection.

“I need, so much, to talk with you. Not to hurt you, not to make a problem. Is it possible, Alys, for us to meet? These matters are so difficult over the telephone coming out wrong sometimes, and I would like to be able to talk about them to you face-to-face. You see, if you give me the chance, I will explain …” And here she goes silent again and I can hear the hands-over-the-phone muffling of her tears. “I am planning a trip to Los Angeles as soon as there is work for me there. My manager is working on it.”

I am silent.

“Actually, the truth is, I have not been able to work. My daughter has needed me close at hand. I know you must understand that situation. You and I, we have a great deal in common. I would like to meet you again. To talk about them, our children.”

“No,” I say, slamming the door on this idea.

Another moment of silence on her end. “We must sort this out,” she says, equally firm. “Isabel and I are having a hard time of it.”

Isabel. One of the names Marc had wanted to call Hannah.

“I have no family here. I have no one to turn to. The way Marc spoke of you, and Hannah … can you understand that I feel as if you are my family?”

A chill runs up my spine. I hate Marc, furious he has put me in this situation. I reach into the bottom drawer of his desk, where I know he hid his cigarettes. I shake one out and light it.

“I don’t believe there is a way to sort this out, Gabriella.” I say her name slowly, pronouncing each syllable. “In fact, please stop calling. Leave us alone.”

“I cannot. Marc had another family. You must recognize us. Our daughters are half sisters. Marc would have wanted us to work this out,” she adds.

Inhaling deeply, I explain, “I don’t know what you mean by ‘working this out.’ I’m sure had Marc wanted us to work it out, he would have directed us. Don’t you think?” I watch the smoke as I exhale. I can be so cold. “I mean, nine years is enough time to have figured something out,” I say rather calmly, considering the circumstances. The cigarette has made me dizzy. I need to call Elizabeth.

“You should know that Marc never had any intention of hurting you,” Gabriella says quietly. “You were not to know about us unless it was absolutely necessary. Now it seems necessary.”

“Not for me.” Inhaling the cigarette, my jaw clenches, my body is stiff. I feel like there is a metal rod tied up against my spine. “You both must have thought me an awful fool.” I am surprised I have admitted this to her. Nine years.

As I stub the cigarette out on one of Marc’s crystal paperweights, it occurs to me how stressful it must have been for him. The lies he had to tell. The lies he lived. No wonder he smoked and was on edge most of the time. Had he planned to keep the two of them from me forever?

“How did you manage for as long as this without my finding out?” I ask.

“I can hear how angry you are,” Gabriella says. “It was just something that happened. We didn’t plan it and we certainly were not trying to make you look or feel a fool. That was the last thing Marc wanted, believe me. He loved you dearly.”

“Now that’s a comfort.” I almost laugh.

“Obviously I’ve had more time to get used to this. Please let me tell you how it happened. Perhaps when you hear—”

“I can’t listen anymore.”

Her tone changes. “If you won’t let us in emotionally, perhaps you might be willing to help in other ways. You see, Marc was paying for Isabel’s school as well as our mortgage. I’ve had to take a sizable loan against the house and I’ve run through most of it.”

Ah, finally, there’s the money issue.

“Oh my God, Gabriella. I happen to have a family to provide for, too. I’m sure a singer of your caliber makes a lot more money than a poet. Forgive me, but I cannot talk any longer. I must go.”

As I put the phone down, I remember Marc’s calendar.
I’s bill due
jumps out at me. Why should I have to give her anything? She has already had more than her fair share. And our daughters most certainly do not need to know one another. How in the world would I explain to Hannah that her father had lived a double life? Am I supposed to bridge the gap between her and her “half sister” by explaining that when he was in Brazil and couldn’t come to her parent/teacher conference, or missed it when she starred in
Ramona Quimby
, it was not really because he was working, but that he was in Rio with his other daughter? For that matter, I wonder how Gabriella had explained this to Isabel.

While I stand by the kitchen window hunched down, unable to move, my arms crossed over my chest, the phone rings again. Two rings, three, four rings—the machine picks up.

“Alys, I know you are there. You absolutely must help me, Alys!”

I vomit into the sink.

F
or the next twenty-four hours I stay in bed, sleeping on and off, getting up only to go to the bathroom. My body is so heavy. At five thirty a.m. the great horned owl hoots. I have not heard it in years. Marc had thought he was gone for good. But he is back, just outside my window in the same eucalyptus he was always in.

I lie perfectly still, thinking that what I have really wished for most often this year is to just lie down flat as a rubbed stone at the bottom of some river, the water rushing over me, smoothing my edges, all memory of heartache pulled out with the rush of the current as it empties itself. And in the end to rise like that owl and eye the water’s surface, shining, its pull, wild with life, my own. Water over water, words over words, water over words, words over water—the persistence of that rhythm, the sound of life beating in my own ear. Collect yourself, it says. Pick yourself up like a prized pebble along a riverbank. Hold yourself lightly, letting the cool river wash over you. You are worth keeping.

And that is an example of the kind of awful, overwritten nonsense I have been committing to paper in the wee hours of the morning since Marc died.

In the morning, I am certain I must see Da, yet the thought of leaving the country while Hannah is at camp seems terrifying. But melodramatic as it seems, there is no other choice. Da’s time is running out. I get up, shower, make myself a cup of milky coffee and, without a moment’s hesitation, pick up the telephone and make a
reservation using most of my accrued miles, for tonight’s red-eye on American Airlines to London. I remember the Angel Hotel; Da and I walked by it when we were in Cardiff together. As if I’ve done it a thousand times before, I call and make a booking to begin the following afternoon. Then I arrange for a car to pick me up at Heathrow Airport and drive me down to Cardiff.