Parts Unknown (9 page)

But things could be different now. I would stop by Blick Art Materials on Beverly after the museum, I decided, and pick up some supplies—fresh canvas, maybe a new brush, for a treat.

Everything in the Getty garden was arranged so elegantly. Bougainvillea twined on metal supports around a pool with an entrancing floating, planted maze. Strange globe-like succulents were arranged in neat rows, and a stream became a fountain, which ended in a hidden pool several stories below . Kids ran and laughed in the bright sun near the fountain, around the paths leading to the labyrinth. Sunshine glanced off their hair, haloing their heads with bright energy. I stopped in the middle of the path and closed my eyes, mentally photographing this moment.

I was suddenly jostled, someone bumping straight into me. My eyes sprang open. A well-dressed gentleman stood beside me—suit coat, neatly pressed khakis, close-cropped white-blond hair. “I’m so sorry!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t mean to walk right into you—are you okay?”

“I’m fine, and it’s my fault anyhow, for stopping like that,” I reassured him. “It’s just such a beautiful day—I was letting the sun soak in. For a minute I felt like I was at the beach.”

“That’s why I’m here too,” he confessed. “It’s so pleasant outside that even the Geometry of Seeing exhibit couldn’t hold my attention. And I came here just to see it—only to find out that I’d rather be here in the sunshine.” He spoke with an almost British cadence and I eagerly broke in, “You have a lovely accent. Are you from . . . another country?” Remembering too late that it was rude to ask after people’s origins.

He laughed. “Oh no, I was born and raised in Los Angeles.”

“My mistake—I lived in London for a year . . . I’m still a huge Anglophile.”

“I am fond of trifle—does that count?”

We had started walking as we talked, winding our way through the gardens and down to the pond at the bottom, with that miniature floating maze in the center.

We sat down on a bench for a moment.

“What would you find if you could get to the middle of that maze?” I wondered aloud.

He furrowed his brow, perplexed. “Is that a trick question? It’s too small—you wouldn’t fit!”

That answer pretty much sucked, but I stuck out my hand anyhow. “Hi. I’m Vivian.”

“George. George Anglin. Pleased to meet you.”

“And you.” Our handshake seemed the first step in some nineteenth century dance, the dancers circling each other warily, only their hands touching.

“What are you doing next?” I asked, pulling out my gallery guide.

“Lunch, I suppose,” he said. “Although I do have a list I brought with me, of pieces I really wanted to see today.” He retrieved a meticulously hand-printed inventory from his inside jacket pocket:
Lansdowne Herakles
,
Oak Tree in Winter—Talbot
,
Irises—Van Gogh
. “But it’s noon . . .” He checked his watch. “I always have lunch at this time. Would you like to join me?”

I wondered how old he was. Late thirties, maybe? Forty? I was twenty-four. Well, it’s not like he was asking me on a date. And I had nothing better to do, anyhow. “Sure, lunch sounds good.” We walked together toward the sandwich cart, his cream-colored button-down shirt and jeans blurring his angular frame at the edges as we passed the creamy limestone buildings. He was so pale, his eyebrows and eyelashes almost white in the bright sun against his freckled skin, and he walked with gravitas, one hand grasping the jutting wrist of the other.

I bought a roast-beef sandwich; he went for a green salad with dressing on the side. We sat at one of the outside cafe tables, near one of those cream-colored limestone walls. An in-ground fountain shot up, then disappeared, then flung itself from the pavement again.

“So are you a native?” he asked me, pausing while chewing delicately. He would be such a well-mannered dinner party companion, were I ever invited to any dinner parties.

“Of Los Angeles? Oh no, I’m from San Jose, with detours to Connecticut, and London.”

“It must have been hard to leave the Bay area—it’s so beautiful there. So many green and open places; they’re hard to find here.”

I glanced up at the blue, blue sky. The sun was so warm and bright, far closer to the earth than it had been in San Jose.

“No, it wasn’t hard to leave, at all. I prefer it here, actually.” One place was the same as another, really.

“And what brought you here?” I would have thought he was prying, but he seemed so genuinely interested, I relaxed. It had been so long since someone had asked me questions, had wanted to hear my answers.

“Well . . . someone I remembered from college lived here. And I sort of ended up here, wondering if I’d find him.”

“Did you?”

“Oh. No. It was silly of me in the first place. And that was a few years ago.” I blinked and smiled at George. “It’s just me. I live in this cool restored Art Deco building on Kingsley, and I’m an art assistant, and a receptionist. Till I can get together my portfolio, and start submitting slides to galleries. It’s taking longer than I thought it would. To get myself together. I mean, get my stuff together.”

“You have plenty of time,” he assured me. “You’re young. You’re so fortunate, to be able to create art. I always wished I had an artistic side, but so far I haven’t found it. I can appreciate art, at least, even if I can’t create it.”

“Thanks,” I said, suddenly uncomfortable focusing attention on myself. “It feels more like a curse than a blessing sometimes. What about you?”

“I live near LACMA, actually. In this rent-controlled apartment—it’s in a wonderful old building that looks like a castle. I teach statistics at Cal Tech.”

“I guessed it!” I exclaimed. “I had a feeling you were really smart.”

He laughed. “I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“No—it’s the way you walk. So . . . purposefully. And with such good posture.”

 “My mother made me take ballet classes when I was young. I was the only boy there, and when my school friends found out I was teased mercilessly. For years! But I did learn how to stand properly.” He swished his fingers across the table, a graceful movement. “And to move with intention. I try to make every motion economical, the right one.”

“Isn’t it easier just to slouch?” I asked. “You don’t have to think about slouching—you just do it.”

“But that’s the point—living with intention. Even in the most mundane moments, like taking a walk—you make it meaningful.”

I wanted to grasp his hand, suddenly, take some of his self-assurance for myself. My fingers twitched involuntarily.

“So, Cal Tech—that’s exciting. Isn’t it an awful commute, though?”

His eyes lit up as we fell into the perennial Los Angeles conversion topic—back roads to Pasadena, hours to leave home in which the traffic was light, and horror stories—“Once I was driving to work on the 110,” he recounted, “and traffic was backed up for miles—literally miles! This was crazy traffic, even for LA. Everyone was confused, they had no idea what was going on. People were getting out of their cars and walking around the freeway. It turned out someone was about to jump from one of the overpasses. They’d closed down the whole freeway, there were policemen and fire trucks everywhere. Eventually the guy gave up. But we just sat there, for an hour and a half.”

I half-smiled, jiggling my bottle of water. It was hard to tell if the story was funny or sad. “So, you must have liked the Geometry of Seeing exhibit. Being into math and formulas and all.”

“Yes, I did. Nice and orderly, the way I like it.” Was he being self-deprecating or did he mean it? I eyed him and he smiled bashfully. “I prefer a bit of the unpredictable myself,” I grinned back. “Shall we take a look at those irises, then?”

He offered his arm and I linked mine through his, and we walked toward the gallery. There the irises were, their downturned blue petals like little frowny faces. The bright sunflowers in the background were out of reach. I wanted to reach out and touch the aggressive, thick brushstrokes, but of course I couldn’t. And divorced from the passion and heartache that Van Gogh must have felt through his life, it was reduced to a pretty painting, in a sterile room. I didn’t want to stay any longer, looking at this extraordinarily costly painting that had done Van Gogh no good in his life, painted a year before he died in an asylum.

“I need to go, George,” I said, already moving toward the exit. “But it was nice meeting you.” It had been a good diversion talking to him, but he seemed so put together. Talking to him showed the mess my life was in stark relief.

“Can I have your number? Maybe we can meet again,” he suggested. I felt a surprised, bright flare warm me inside. “Oh sure, here . . . wait, I don’t have a pen.” I rummaged through my overstuffed shoulder bag in frustration. He reached into his capacious inside jacket pocket and produced a small pad and a pen. I scribbled my number, and in return he handed me his business card. I put it in my purse, where it disappeared from view, and from my mind, until a few days later.

~ ~ ~

“Hi, sweetie.” I hugged George gratefully—my savior. Every night, just as I was at the brink of insanity, he came home and rescued me, over and over. He kissed me back, then mock-staggered—Lucy had run up behind him and was holding on to his legs for dear life. “Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy” she sang, like a mantra. “You’re home, you’re home, you’re home!”

He kissed Lucy soundly on both cheeks. “How’s my pumpkin?” Then he lifted her up on his shoulders and carried her to her room, taking over the bedtime routine from there. I limped into the living room and collapsed onto the sofa. From Lucy’s room, I heard the musical cadence of George reading her favorite story,
Guess How Much I Love You
. I knew Lucy was tucked in bed, sucking her thumb, content at last.

George eventually emerged, loosening his tie with one finger. “There’s not much for dinner,” I nodded toward the kitchen. “We just had toast and cheese tonight.”

“Healthy,” he teased, then, carefully, “You should try to get her to eat vegetables. Or fruits. Just try, that’s all I’m asking.”

“You don’t know what my day is like, okay?” I near-whispered, with a barely repressed fury that threatened to erupt into tears. “So don’t even . . .”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” his arms around me then. “I know it’s hard. I wish I didn’t have to work so late.”

“I’m counting the days till summer vacation,” I whispered into his neck. Summertime—when he was home, all summer, and it was the three of us. Instead of just me and Lucy, battling wills all afternoon long in that claustrophobic little apartment.

He pulled back, and I felt alone for a moment, outside the safety of his arms. “Any news?” he asked hopefully. I shook my head dully. “Negative, again. I’m spending a fortune on those pee-sticks. I just can’t understand it—it was so easy, with Lucy.”

“When it happens, it happens,” he murmured. “Everything in its time.”

I had a sudden, panicked vision of me, not pregnant, still, two years from now. Lucy would be five, and in kindergarten. And moms would be trickling back to work—the stay-at-home moms from preschool transforming themselves back into working women, or tireless PTA volunteers. And what would I be doing? I had to have another, just to keep the future at bay. Another baby would buy me five more years, at least, to figure things out.

What would happen, I wondered more often than I should, if a person couldn’t figure out what to do in life? Did that mean that you would just . . . die? Disappear? If you had no idea what path to follow—maybe there was no path, for you. You couldn’t just lounge around like some 1950s housewife these days, vacuuming the floor occasionally while watching television. Everyone needed a plan.

My plan turned out to be this: Marry George. Have a baby. Repeat. But the
repeat
part wasn’t working out so good. I needed a new plan.

I was just so tired, I couldn’t come up with one.

If you could map out my life in Los Angeles, it would look like one big square. The top right corner was the apartment, where I spent most of my time. The bottom right corner was the Fairfax library, where Lucy and I lost ourselves in make-believe stories every week. The lower left corner was any of a handful of stores—Ralphs, Target, Trader Joe’s—where I spent many mornings. The top left corner was the park, where I whiled away weekday afternoons, watching the nannies, sipping coffee, and dreaming about a different life.

~ ~ ~

I was honestly surprised when George called, four days later: “It’s George Anglin—we met at the Getty last weekend?”

“Hi!” I exclaimed. “It’s nice to hear from you.” That encounter had receded to the back of my mind, although I was still meaning to stop by Blick Art Materials and pick up those supplies.

“I enjoyed meeting you, and I was wondering—would you like to have dinner with me on Saturday?”

Me? Being asked on a date? It so rarely happened. In fact, I almost never got phone calls; they were usually for Kip, my roommate. He was a drummer for Luscious Sorrow, whose paltry gigs at filthy Silverlake bars necessitated a full-time job serving coffee at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. We’d found each other through a Dawson College alumni housing web site, and we were the perfect roommates: both over-educated, slumming it in jobs whose annual pay was far less than a year’s tuition at our former school. Kip and I stayed out of each other’s way, except for companionable trysts on Sunday afternoons to watch “Blind Date” and howl at the goofy jokes. I wondered every so often what it would be like to kiss him, to run my fingers through that Gandalf-length goatee and caress those stretched earlobes with thick black knobs in them. As we guffawed at the hilarious word balloons on our favorite show, I imagined reaching out and touching his sinewy arm blazing shoulder-to-wrist with colorful body art. But I was too shy to make a move.

Our two-bedroom apartment was tiny and lacked heat (unless you wanted to stick your head in the oven), but living there was worth it just to fling open the living room windows and gaze into the building’s courtyard, lush with bird-of-paradise plants and overgrown bright-pink hibiscus—a reminder of some more hopeful pre-Depression era, when perhaps young starlets lived in this building, or people with grand ideas, just starting out but destined for future greatness. Meanwhile, the hibiscus were beautiful, but every time I accidentally brushed a body part against them, I broke out in a rash.