Outside the Ordinary World (28 page)

“You find something funny?” she asks.

“No—nothing at all. I was just thinking about how my own family dealt with crisis.”

“Oh? How was that?”

“We watched movies,” I say. “We went to church and watched a ton of movies.”

“I would like very much to work with you as a family,” she continues. “But I can’t really do it unless I get you and your husband here together—and then all the cards are going to have to be on the table.”

I nod, allowing myself full access to the ragged thumbnail now. I don’t want to give this woman the credit she deserves. I don’t think I’m ready to show my cards.

“How much did Hannah tell you?” I ask.

“Enough to know that she’s managing a secret for you, and the pressure is too much for her. She has to let it out. She’s even thought about cutting.”

“Oh—God.”

“It’s serious, Sylvia. She needs some relief.”

“And you can’t help her unless we all come? Unless Nathan’s involved?”

“It makes my job pretty difficult, otherwise.”

“And, she really does need help, doesn’t she?” It’s as if I’m just now surrendering to this truth. The words, as they leave my body, seem to break something on their way—tears rush up hot and unbidden. I cry then, to my horror and relief, as the therapist watches, her young brow creased. I reach for the tissues and cry as if I’ve been saving it up for this poor woman—so many tears, they take up the remaining minutes of our session. Just as I’ve resolved to confess and renounce everything, she glances at the clock, sighs and announces time is up. I gather my things to leave.

“She’s a good kid, Sylvia,” the therapist says, ushering me out.

Later, I’ll remember every detail of the silent drive home, Hannah picking at a scrape on her elbow, plugging into her iPod and turning her gaze away, our car doors slamming in unison. I’ll remember my daughter bounding up the stairs two at a time, locking herself in her room all through the afternoon and dinner hours; Nathan taking up a grilled cheese sandwich and apple slices, then bringing down the crumb-strewn plate when she’s done. I’ll remember the ghostly aura of his long legs spread in the tub that night, Emmie’s fifth poop accident in three days. Emmie refusing to get into her own bed and crying until Nathan carries her to the living room sofa, lets her curl up on his chest the way he used to when they were colicky babies, Coleman Hawkins lulling them to sleep. I watch them for a long time before attempting to sleep on the chilly expanse of our king-sized futon. Freezing rain spatters the panes in bursts, like bullets, and I finally give up, flip on the computer and discover Tai’s latest installment—

I’m afraid of everything we can’t hold on to, Sylvie. Even the echo of your voice has changed. I should know better, right? Should let it be enough, as it is—or was? Outside my window, just this expanse of frozen ground…

Of all the possible responses I might offer, there is only one urgent enough to break through my anesthetized fear.

Eli knows, Tai—please talk to him. Tell him not to do what he thinks he must do. Tell him it’s pointless to punish himself for others’ mistakes. Please just be there for him now.

I press Send, then delete both messages. I tiptoe downstairs, past my sleeping spouse and child to the kitchen, where I retrieve a bottle of cheap Merlot and a plastic cup, carry them out to the car in the rain.

For the better part of two hours I sit there, staring back at the outline of our tight little dwelling—apology of shutters, faint glow through the streaked kitchen windows, one vase of drooping coral roses backlit on the dining room table. I drink down the entire bottle, thinking about how I’ve failed—as mother, daughter, artist, wife—while the public radio station plays reruns of
A Prairie Home Companion
and
Jazz Safari
and it gets too cold, finally, to stay outside drunk. Too pathetic to sit nauseous and hiding in the empty van. Too nuts to attempt driving onto the highway, though I do think about it for a while. I think about skidding down I-91 in the black rain along the Connecticut River and bursting clean through the guardrails—purified by water, rather than fire. I picture it for a minute, two minutes, ten. Then force myself back inside, throw up in the downstairs toilet.

And then the call comes, a little after midnight—Alison’s voice rasping through the phone: someone’s died. I must be having a nightmare, or perhaps I’ve gone back in time. This is my father’s death again, maybe, and I’ll have to relive it over and over for the rest of my life. Only, there’s no Santa Ana wind brewing. I’m in the kitchen of my grown-up charade, remembering that it’s 2005, trying to clear my head enough to make out what my sister is saying over the line. “She’s gone, Sylvie, can you hear me? Gram’s gone. It was a horrible few days but she passed an hour ago—she’s peaceful now. Are you still there?”

“Yeah,” I slur. “I think so.”

“The burial’s on Friday,” my sister tells me. “I know you guys were just out here, but it would be great if you could make it.”

“Of course I’ll come,” I say. “Course I’ll be there.”

There is just not enough money for all four of us to fly again. “Stop fretting about it, would you?” Nathan declares in the early gray light of our room, when I say for the fifth time that I don’t want to leave them.

“What will you do with them?” I whisper now, rifling through my dresser drawers. “How will you handle them both?”

“I’ll take a few days off. We’ll manage—my mom can help.” Nathan yawns, then grins wryly from the corner of our bed. “Uh, why are you packing shorts, Sylv?” I look down, realizing I’ve been reaching for all the wrong things—sundresses and blue jeans, my favorite khaki shorts, flip-flops, a black-and-white polka-dot bikini. “You’re taking a bikini to your grandmother’s burial?” He laughs, one eyebrow cocked high. “You’re taking flip-flops?”

“I guess that’s not really appropriate, is it?” I put my hands to my cheeks, smoothing the scorch of grief and fatigue. My head is still spinning from the wine, eyes hot; everything feels grainy and skinned, as if the world’s been rubbed raw with sandpaper.

“Hon, it’s January. It’s northern Cal. It’s a funeral.” I nod, removing my summer things from the leather duffle, stacking them on the
boudoir
chair. “That’s probably the stuff you always took to Orchard Hill as a kid,” Nathan observes astutely. “It makes sense, in a way.”

“I’ve only slept three hours,” I explain, trying to remember when everything slipped from the realm of conscious choice. “I guess I need a black dress—do I even
have
a black dress?”

“What about that cute dress you wore to the Planning Department party last year? You know—silky, above the knee, scoopy neck?” He draws an imaginary scoop across his own chest, raises his brows.

“Can I wear that at a funeral?”

“Do you have a choice? It’s better than the polka-dot bikini, at any rate.” We both start to giggle, picturing the scene—me, standing graveside in my beachwear. We laugh much longer than the joke is funny, desperate for this meager reprieve. Then he sighs and says, “Try it on for me, Sylv—would you?”

“What?”

“I’d really like to see you in that dress.”

I’m just shattered enough, just threadbare enough to acquiesce, taking off my sweatpants and bra—timidly at first—slipping the black silk over exhausted shoulders as he watches, legs stretched before him on the rough quilt, that guarded grin, depth of the brown eyes I know as well as my breath. His coltish hands reach out, patient—almost shy. This man I share dreams and daughters with, this man who still trusts me. I spin once in my funeral dress, then swallow hard, put my head down and walk smack into my resistance and terror—it’s like cracking through a sheet of hard plastic—to join him on the bed.

“Take off your clothes,” I say, voice buckling. “It’s been too long.”

We’re horribly awkward at first, fumbling for some new purchase in dry lips and coffee tongues, pulling back, coming together in fits and starts like adolescents. Then, finally, striking a familiar groove. I have forgotten all this: the buttery skin of his back, small furry ass and long-muscled limbs, easy abdomen and comfortable hip bones, the painful-looking scar at the base of his throat. I forgot the slow fluency with which he enters from behind, this cock that put life in my belly, his tall body spooning mine, fingers cupping the breasts that fed our children, mattress sloping toward his side in the dawn.

“Just take it slow, Sylvie,” he whispers. “There’s no need to rush.”

These are the very same words he once used to teach me to swim, our first summer, before we’d dreamed of home equity lines, adultery or second chances. I’d grown up in a pool, spent hours diving through the chlorinated water like an otter, suspended in sunlit blue, hair a bright tangle above me. But I didn’t really learn to swim, never once had a lesson, couldn’t have done a lap of the Australian crawl to save my life. So that first summer, Nathan showed me how to lift with my elbow and reach upward, forward and down, using my hand like a sleek fin, synchronizing my breathing. It wasn’t long before we were swimming across the lake and back again, sometimes twice in an afternoon.

One cloudy Sunday, about midway back, I was seized with the startling realization of how deep and cold the water beneath us really was, how far we still had to swim to get to shore. Exhausted from too much partying the previous night, my feet cramping up like claws, I suddenly panicked. “Just take your time,” Nathan had coached. “There’s no need to rush; you know how to float.” As if on cue, the overcast June sky broke open, rain pelting our upturned faces. “I can’t make it back,” I told him. “I’ve gone too far.”

“Of course you’ll make it,” he crooned, moving beside me stroke for stroke in the black water, breathing, talking me through. He promised that he was a strong enough swimmer for both of us, said he could easily pull me back in if necessary. Trusting him, I’d found my courage, made my way to shore, and it wasn’t until we were panting on the damp sand that he admitted he’d been acting. “I was scared shitless and wiped out myself,” he gasped. “I really didn’t know if I’d be able to get us back.”

But it was a good act, well intentioned. And by believing it, I had made it true.

DO ALL THINGS PASS? I WONDER AS I MUSCLE MY RENTED
wagon off Interstate 280 toward downtown Lafayette.
Or do they endure?
Still pulsing with worry and fatigue as I turn left down Happy Valley Road, I’m thinking again about Hannah—her haunted eyes when I forced my way in her room this morning, to tell her about Gram’s passing. She looked so forlorn, scrunched on her bed amid the anarchic mess of her bedroom; I almost couldn’t bring myself to go. I leaned my head against the door frame and whispered, “We’re going to sort all this out when I get back, honey—I promise.”

Groaning up the familiar slope of Orchard Hill, I park near my three favorite redwoods, step into the fragrant mist. No one comes to greet me this time, so I make my way across the driveway, through the kitchen slider. The house is silent, though everything looks the same: same clutter of custard cups on the yellow counter, same broken transistor radio squatting by the sink, same Sierra Club calendar curling near the phone.

Someone snorts from the great room. I go in to find Poppy, asleep on the couch as if he’s taken up where she left off. I crouch down to watch. The tanned planes of his cheeks are finally slipping, a network of broken capillaries strung around his eyes. But the nose is still strong and fine, the jaw firm. His handsomeness has always reminded me of Nathan’s, or vice versa. Staring at him, I can imagine how my husband will look as an old man. A chill enters me, and I stand. All around us, Gram’s things are gathered on tabletops, collected in shoe boxes, spread out on scarves across the tile hearth. Clearly, Mom and Alison have been busy.

I discover them in the master bathroom, sorting toiletries into Tupperware containers, filling up trash bags.

“Isn’t it a little early for all this?” I ask, running my fingers over a ragtag of ancient cosmetics on the counter, staring at the shoe-box lids full of odds and ends—a tiny wooden bird whistle from Japan, a carved elephant from their trip to India back in the sixties, a striped hatbox stuffed with threadbare underpants. “Isn’t this a bit premature?” I ask after my mother and sister greet me, then continue their cleaning and collecting. It seems wrong to be going through her things so soon, with her soapy linen smell still floating through the hallways, her presence so tangible, I’m half expecting her to come shuffling around the corner.

“We can’t afford to be sentimental right now, angel,” Mom explains without looking up from her work. “There are people coming to see the house next week.”

“Coming to see the house?”

“Yes. We’ve got it listed with Uncle Peter’s agency.”

“You’re
selling
Orchard Hill?” The words feel punched out of me; apparently my rib cage is going to fold up now, my lungs collapse.

Mom stares at me, shadows of fatigue ringing her eyes. Her mouth wavers, then tightens. “Of course we’re selling it. You didn’t think Poppy would stay on here all alone, did you?”

“Can’t someone take over the place? Doesn’t anyone want to live here?”

“Are you volunteering, Sylvie?” Ali smirks, sweeping a gold leaf of bangs off her forehead.

For the briefest moment, I try to imagine it—selling our house, leaving our jobs, giving up my business, extracting the kids from schools and friends—the possibility is strangely exhilarating, though I’m not sure how we’d pull it off; we’re so in debt, I doubt we could even pay the movers.

“This place is terribly run-down. It’ll need at least a hundred grand in renovations,” Mom pronounces, sealing the deal. “You couldn’t even afford the property taxes.”

“But, Gram would be heartbroken,” I protest. The truth is, I’ve never even considered Orchard Hill as a commodity, a sketch filed in some probate office with frontage and zoning and taxes—a hunk of prime Bay Area real estate—but of course it is. I feel such a fool. “She’s not even buried yet,” I add in a watery voice. My mother and sister glance at each other, and Ali stands and stalks from the room.

“Ali’s just exhausted, angel,” Mom explains. “It’s great that you’re going to stick around for a few days and help out.”

“I was going to, Mom. It’s just that—”

“You’ve been caught up in your own drama, I know.” My mother’s voice sounds terse, but her face, when she stands to embrace me, is gathered with worry, unhinged by sorrow.

“How’s your family?” she whispers into my hair. “Have you given him up yet?”

Do all things come to pass, or do they endure?
I’m asking myself again in the second row next to Mom and Ali at Gram’s funeral—or rather, her burial. We don’t have funerals in this family. We don’t mourn our dead in churches, or view their preserved bodies—God forbid—in open caskets beneath an altar, holy light shining through the stained glass. Gram’s peach, gold-trimmed casket is sealed up tight. Our family has small, graveside ceremonies, or in the case of my father, none at all. As Ali grips my hand in the drizzle, as Uncle Peter reads from the Beatitudes—Gram’s favorite—I’m remembering Mom’s words, twenty-nine years ago:
Isn’t it better just to get on with things?
she’d asked.
To remember the dead as they once were and not dwell on the gruesome parts?

Now the preacher is saying the gruesome parts aren’t real—that death is just going to sleep, more or less, while we wait for the Second Coming. On that day of deliverance, he explains, True Believers will rise from their graves, young again and fully fleshed, rubbing the dirt from their faces, stretching toward paradise. I picture them disoriented and a little grumpy, like Emmie waking from one of her afternoon naps. Glancing around at my family members, I wonder which of them find comfort in his explanation.

As Sheila stands to recite another Bible verse, I find myself thinking about the Wallace Stevens poem Nathan used to read me on the roof of our old house, or in the midst of my 3:00 a.m. insomnia:

Have I been looking for God in the wrong places—perhaps even Tai? Seeking my lost faith in his earthy spirituality, his Zen Buddhism, his belief in the power of labyrinths and landscapes and love? Have I been trying to resurrect magic? Maybe there’s another way. I reach into the pocket of my raincoat, feel for the blue agate, its rough satisfaction against my palm.

We are all wet by now and chilled to the marrow, ready to return to warmth and food and the other comforts of the living. The pastor says we needn’t grieve for our lost Gram, we needn’t be sad, since we will surely see her again. I close my eyes, letting the words burble together in my mind, the cool California air sting my cheeks. Whatever the preacher says, whatever these cousins and aunts and uncles believe, I want to gnash my teeth now, to tear my dress and howl at the indifferent fog rolling from the bay.

Sandwiched into my narrow twin bed that night, Alison’s familiar soft snores beside me, I know I won’t sleep, despite the exhaustion thrumming in my bones, twitching my eyelids.

I long to try Nathan and the girls again, but it’s much too late. So I creep down the hall to the den, where Mom is sleeping tonight—to keep an eye on Poppy, she said—only she’s awake, too. The light’s on and when I push through the door she’s reading
National Geographic
on the edge of her makeshift bed.

“You, too, huh?” I say, coming in and sitting beside her.

“Oh, angel—” She drops the magazine to the coffee table. “Just can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Which part?”

She glances at the ceiling. “How scared she was at the end. How she clung to me.” She shudders. “Even after all these years, she didn’t want to let go.”

“Does anyone?”

“Probably not.” She laughs dourly, pressing her eyes with the heels of her hands. “But Gram was so sick, and had such faith—I thought she’d be more peaceful about it.”

We’re quiet, breathing side by side, the grandfather clock clicking toward dawn. Finally I say, “Maybe faith and fear aren’t mutually exclusive, Mom. Maybe faith is just a decision you make, in spite of fear. It’s easy to be swept up by emotion.”

“Well, I know all about that, don’t I?”

“Yeah, you do.” I yawn. I’m so tired, my knees are quivering. “I forgot my sleeping pills—I was in such a rush.”

“Poppy gave me some Valium—should we take one?” I nod. “They work better with a little Chardonnay.”

“Mom! I thought you didn’t drink.”

“I don’t. Just a little Chardonnay now and then.” She grins and I understand that I’ve always adored and despised this in her—her hypocrisy, her inability to behave, despite her good-girl roots and first-rate intentions. She waits in her purple nightgown as I retrieve a bottle, pour our wine into Gram’s petite crystal glasses.

“Bottoms up, I guess,” she says, handing me a Valium.

“Actually, I don’t know how you ever had the nerve to do what you did, coming from this place, these parents. I don’t know how you managed it.”

“What? What did I do?” she asks.

“Mr. Robert. It was pretty courageous, considering.” It’s not the first time I’ve thought this. She runs a finger over her chapped lips.

“Oh, Sylvie—Dad and I were doomed from the start.”

I sit down in Poppy’s leather chair, facing her. “Tell me,” I say. “You said you would, when we had more time.”

She nods. “Well, you know I never should have married him at nineteen, but we were so in love. We thought happiness was just a room you could waltz into.” She smiles, forlorn. “We were stupid; we had no idea how hard it would be—children, poverty, his internship, me working nights…” Glancing at her watery reflection in the window, she smoothes the hair from her eyes. “Just kids ourselves, really, and your dad so
wounded,
so very…”

“What?”

“Very early on in our marriage, I had a miscarriage, Sylvie.”

“Wow.” I gulp my wine. “You never told me.”

“I know. It didn’t seem that important.” She shrugs. “I still don’t believe it was the
cause
of anything, really, but that’s when I started noticing him pulling away. Sensing his distance, how—how unsettled he was. You know he lost both his parents. I think he was terrified he’d lose us, too, that the abandonments would continue.”

“So, it was safer to just stay estranged?”

“I think that’s right. He started working all the time, coming home later. There were a couple of women, too—nurses at the hospital. It wasn’t all that serious, honey, but that wasn’t much comfort at the time. I was furious, and I hadn’t a clue how to bring him back. And then I met Robert at the office where I was doing secretarial work—long before you were born. He was married, too, of course; we were just friends.
Good
friends—” Here she smiles, rolling her eyes. “He used to take me to lunch on the Santa Monica board-walk when I was pregnant with Alison, bought me Coke floats. He’d talk to me in a way Don couldn’t—was afraid to. Funny, how we actualize our greatest fears, isn’t it?”

I nod, gripping my own wrist.

“And marriage is the very hardest work—
you
know that now.”

“Well, maybe not as hard as—mining rock quarries, or solving the hunger crisis.”

“It didn’t help matters that your Dad turned to the bottle.” She ignores my sarcasm. “And I to another man.” She sips her wine, grunts softly.

“And that your
daughter
kept telling you to leave,” I add.

She peers at me. Then sets her glass on the table and leans forward, taking my chin in her hand. “Sylvia dear,” she says, over-enunciating. “You were a child. You were not responsible for my choices. Or your father’s. Do you understand that?”

“In my rational mind, I do.” I turn my face away.

“Think about it, angel—would you hold Hannah accountable for yours?”

We’re silent as I refill our glasses. “No,” I finally concede, voice crumbling. “Of course I wouldn’t.”

“Well, then.”

“I just— Sometimes I wonder why you gave me your secret, Mom. Why you made me choose.”

She stares at me, her gray eyes withdrawing. There is something like defiance in the upward tilt of her jaw. Then her features begin to collapse pitifully; she covers them with her hands. I wait, resisting my habitual urge to reach out, alleviate, snatch back the hurtful question. After a few interminable moments the hands drop; her face is composed again, though blotchy, and her voice wavers as she says, “I was afraid to make the choice all my own, I guess, angel. I felt so very alone. So scared.” She leans back on the couch, shaking her head.

“I know,” I say. “I always knew how you felt.” I don’t tell her that, until very recently, I sometimes wondered if we were the same person. Mom sighs and I realize I’m still waiting. I want her to apologize. To say
sorry
for all the haunted years. Instead she reaches out, strokes my cheek with the backs of her cool fingers. Maybe it’s enough.

“What about you and Robert?” I ask. “Are you guys happy?”

“Oh, you know—happy enough. Considering the trail we blazed. I made a lot of wrong moves back then,” she concludes, slouching into the cushions.

I want to tell her that there are no wrong turns, that there is only the next step. It sounds so lovely, but I don’t really believe it. “Maybe you have to make a few wrong turns to find your way,” I offer instead.

“Maybe so. But your story’s different,” she continues, yawning. “
You
still have time—a chance to make things right. And a sweet husband who’s willing to work it out.”