Shelter Us: A Novel (21 page)

“You know, it’s not easy to forgive yourself, Sarah. To be honest, I probably never will forgive myself entirely for the accident.” He sighs. “But you have to try in order to go on living.” He sounds as though he’s repeating someone else’s advice, like he’s been working this out with a therapist or Francesca. I can just imagine them on their Italian terrace, holding glasses of red wine while she implores him, “You must forgive yourself,
amore
.” He’s keeps talking. “I hope you forgive yourself, Sarah. Your family needs you.”

The last statement touches a nerve. “Dad, I’m sorry, but where do you get off giving me advice about family? You left me and ran away to Europe!”

To his credit, he takes my tirade. He waits until I’m done and says, “You’re right. I made a huge mistake. I thought because you were away in college you were already on your own. I was wrong. I messed up. I regret it every day.” I’m surprised by this confession. “I won’t ever get over what happened. I lost Mom; then I lost you. I lost my chance to have a relationship with my grandkids.”

I swallow, knowing I have the power to change that.

“All I’m saying is, don’t do what I did. Don’t leave. Don’t check out.”

I wish I could get away from this conversation, from him. Speeding down this highway with my eyes closed, I have a vision of grabbing the steering wheel and yanking it hard, pulling us across three lanes of traffic, in front of eighteen-wheelers, crashing through the side railing, ending in a blast of steel and rubber and flame and smoke. Ending it once and for all. My eyes pop open, sweat beading at my temples. Is that what I want? To die? To leave my children like my mom left me? I slap my temples to expunge the image. I lean my forehead against the cold window. But new images come: Victoria emerging stone-faced from her bedroom, Arnold helplessly waiting at the door, Brian wrapping around me with his warm body. I grab my head, groan.

“Are you okay?” My dad reaches over to touch my arm, but I bat his hand away.

“No, I’m not okay.” I want the drama to end. I want to be normal. I want to be a good mother with the deepest well of love and patience. “I’M! NOT! OKAY!” I scream and pound my forehead with the heels of my hands. In the midst of my breakdown, a calm millimeter in the center of my brain can see that I am freaking out. I writhe in my seat. I take my seat belt off. Maybe I’m going to open the door and jump out. I don’t know what I’m going to do.

I hear the doors lock. “Stop it right now, Sarah!” I’ve never heard my father’s voice at this level. It startles me, which is his intention. It doesn’t sound like him, and I turn to the back seat to see if someone else has been sitting in the car all along, waiting for just this moment. He pulls over across three lanes and parks on the shoulder of the highway.

“Sarah!” He grabs me by both shoulders. “Stop it. Now.” He continues talking, but I can’t hear him; the furious sound of my blood pumping drowns out his voice. I see his lips moving. We sit like this—he holds my arms; I stare at his face, trying to make out his words—as speeding cars rattle us in their wake. Finally, the pulsing subsides to a point where I can hear the sounds coming out of his mouth.

“Oliver needs you. Izzy needs you. Think of them, Sarah. Think of them.” My body’s tension eases, and he allows his grip on my arms to loosen. I picture Izzy and Oliver holding hands, singing “Ring Around the Rosie.” We all fall down, get up, and do it again.

I wipe my eyes. “Okay.” I agree to live.

“Okay,” he says, relief bringing color back to his terrified face. “Let’s get you home.”

Pulling back onto the highway is frightening. The cars and trucks barely let up. As my dad tries to rejoin the stream of traffic, it dawns on me how dangerous it was for him to pull over, how my outburst nearly did us both in. “Sorry, Dad,” I offer.

“It’s okay, babe.” He grants me the gift of being regular. After a few miles, my breathing returns to normal, as though my frenzied
flare-up drained me of the stress I’d been drowning in. I recognize the rolling subdivisions of Reagan Country, the exurbs of the central city populated by LAPD officers and aspiring American dreamers. We’re getting closer to home.

My phone vibrates with an incoming text from a 510 area code:
Hi. U ok? Miss u. XO, Brian
.

Oh, hell. I gave him my number? I feel my face flush. I text back:
Go away
.

He replies,
Call u tomorrow
. This is not good.

Just then, the loud chime of my cell phone ringing makes me jump. I glance at the screen: Robert’s cell. My stomach clenches with anxiety as I worry that my voice will reveal everything that’s gone on. I try to switch on Regular Sarah mode, whatever that is. Happy voice. “Hello?”

“Mommy!” Oliver’s ecstatic voice sings out. It is joy, a prayer, a revelation.

“Hi, sweetie!” I sing back. “How are you?”

“What?”

I start to repeat myself, but he continues, “Mommy, guess what!”

“What, sweetie?”

“Guess where we are!” He doesn’t wait for me to guess. “We’re at the top of the Ferris wheel, right over the ocean! And Daddy won me a giant Homer Simpson doll, and we had churros and ice cream!”

“That sounds like so much fun! I can’t wait to see you and your Homer Simpson!”

“Yeah,” he says. “Where are you, Mommy?”

“I’m on my way home,” I say. “I’m on the freeway. I’ll be home to give you a good-night kiss, okay?” I shout.

“Okay! Bye, Mommy!” Before I can say “I love you” or “I miss you,” or ask to speak to Izzy or Robert, he’s gone. Silence returns to the car, more noticeable after my shouting.

“You didn’t mention me,” my dad points out.

“I know.”

I send my thoughts to the Ferris wheel rotating at the end of a wooden pier, hovering over the vast, cold ocean. I visualize beams of
light shining down on my family, showering my protection over them. I am eager to get home, to be with them. There is a measure of hope in my heart.

Another hour on the freeway gets us to the middle of the city. We have only a short time left together. A question has been pinging around in my brain for the last fifty miles. I fear that as soon as we stop driving, the spell will be broken and we’ll retreat to our old boundaries. So I leap: “Dad, can I ask you something personal?”

“Okay.”

“Did you ever cheat on Mom?”

He looks at me crookedly, then back toward the road. Where I would have expected indignation or denial, he reacts with a quiet question. “Why do you ask?”

I can tell he knows about me. He looks back to the road, processing this revelation. Now I’m sorry I asked. What was I hoping—that he did cheat and would tell me about it, to somehow absolve me of my sin?

His eyes still on the road, he says, “You know, Sarah, there’s rarely a point of no return.”

I appreciate the lack of eye contact. “What do you mean?”

“I mean people make mistakes. But you don’t have to let your mistakes define you. Mom used to say that.”

“She did?”

“Mm-hmm. You can fix them.” He glances at me. “You can promise yourself not to do it again.”

My face contorts with the effort not to cry. He pretends not to notice and continues. “You know, Mom and I did talk about what would happen if the other one died.”

“Really?” I ask. I’m thirsty for connection to her. Every glimpse into who she was, how she thought. “What did she say?”

“Well,” he says, “she said she’d want me to get married again. To go on living.” It sounds self-serving of him. But it also sounds like Mom.

“And what did you say?”

He half-smiles. “I said that I’d want her to build a shrine to me and mourn me forever.” We laugh together for the first time in years.

After a while I say, “You didn’t answer my question.”

He looks at me. “I know. I didn’t think I had to.” Looking back at the road, he answers, “She was the love of my life.” His voice catches.

The Santa Monica Freeway ends with a tunnel that separates city from beach, ugly concrete from glorious ocean. Bibi says that every time she emerges from the tunnel into that beauty, she feels as if she’s died and gone to heaven. As we get closer to it, I pray that when I emerge I will feel a profound change, a new resolve, a readiness to be all better. I hold my breath and make a wish as I pass through. I don’t feel magically renewed. Instead, a knot forms in my stomach. I’m not ready to go home yet. I’m scared. What if I can’t be better? We approach Chautauqua Boulevard, the first chance to reach my cliffside neighborhood, and I tell my dad to keep driving. “Not yet.”

We pass Temescal Canyon Boulevard, the next chance to turn toward home. The sun dips below the horizon, the sky indigo, orange, and rose. We pass Sunset Boulevard, the last chance to turn home, and he looks at me and asks, “Now?”

“Keep going.”

Past the Getty Villa’s Roman-style arches to Topanga. “Just turn in here,” I say, and he pulls into a beach parking lot. Only a few cars remain, their owners stripping off their wetsuits next to open trunks. We are facing the ocean. I look out at the horizon, scan all the way down to Palos Verdes, breathe in, breathe out. I’m searching for the feeling I used to get when I was seventeen and needed to feel like there was a place for me in the world, like my problems were insignificant in the face of a vast universe. I hear the surfers calling good-bye to each other, car doors slamming, engines starting, tires rolling.

It’s too stuffy in the car. I open my door, put one foot outside. I stop, pull it back in. I don’t want to be out there, either. I don’t want to be anywhere. I open the door a second time, stand up and close it behind me, walk down the stairway to the sand and start to run. I fall into a steady pace. My legs keep moving until my thighs hurt, but I keep going because I don’t know what to do if I stop. My breathing is
loud, and its steady tempo keeps my mind occupied. I count breaths: “In, two, three, four; out, two, three, four.”

I come to the rocks below a restaurant. Above me, first dates and anniversaries and retirement dinners are celebrated. I can’t go any farther without running into the ocean.

But I’m no Virginia Woolf. I fall to the sand. My lungs tighten, aching for air. I pull in my legs, wrap my arms around them, and listen to the waves. I had forgotten how loud they sound at night. I search for the spot the sun left minutes ago. The sky is dark behind and above me. It’s getting cold, and I don’t want to be outside another night. I look back and see my dad standing at the edge of the parking lot, watching over me. Exhausted, I stand up, trudge back through the cool sand, and get into the car without a word. He gets in and gives my leg a pat.

“Take me home, Dad.”

W
e pull over
to the curb in front of my house. I open the car door and gaze up at it. Lights are on upstairs. My dad gets out and stands beside me.

“You ready?” He touches my arm and leaves his hand there.

“Uh-huh.” I nod.

A taxi pulls up behind us. “I called for it from the beach,” he explains. He’s ready to get back to the airport. To his family. “I should go,” he says softly. He slowly removes his hand from my arm, like he thinks I’ll fall over if he takes it away too quickly. “Give them all my love.”

I stand up straighter to reassure him, and myself, that I’ll be okay. “I will. Thanks for getting me home.”

“Thanks for letting me.” He pulls me to him and squeezes me with decades of pent-up concern and regret. I hold on with equal force. Like a battery recharging, I draw on his strength. “You are a wonderful woman, Sarah, and I’m so proud of you. They are so lucky to have you. I mean it. They are lucky to have you, and you are damned lucky to have them.”

I squeeze my eyes tight. The force of missed years holds me against my father while I cry. I feel his body begin to shake, and I realize he is crying, too.

“I love you, Sarah.”

“I know. I love you too, Dad,” I whisper.

I watch the taxi roll away. I wonder when I will see him again, if today will turn out to be an anomaly or a beginning.

I turn to face my house. It looks different. I am not the same woman who left it forty-eight hours ago. My marriage is maimed. My friend is gone. My dad is back. Yet the longer I stare at that stucco, the more I feel it whitewashing what happened in Berkeley, bringing me back to the good version of me. A light is on in the boys’ room. I am anxious—both kinds—to be with them. I unlock the door, enter the house, and tiptoe upstairs. I hear Robert’s voice as I near the top, rhythmic. He’s reading
The Giving Tree
.

“Hello-oo . . .” I softly interrupt as I peek through the door.

“Mommy’s home!”

Voices pile on me as I enter the room. All three of them are squished on Oliver’s bed. This is one of my favorite times of the day, the boys entwined with each other, Oliver offering Izzy the occasional tender kiss.

“I missed you so much,” I say, putting kisses on the boys, feeling the softness of their bodies. My eyes stutter on Robert’s face.

“Mommy, read to us!” Oliver shouts. He gives Robert a look meant to dismiss him from further service tonight.

Robert gets up. “I can take a hint,” he says.

“All right,” I say, “just let me go to the bathroom.” I scoot out before they can object. I lock the bathroom door and look at myself in the mirror. “You can do this, Sarah.” I don’t know what I mean by “this.” All of it, I suppose: read to my children, pretend that nothing illicit happened, erase the last two days from my memory. Jump back into my life. I wash my hands and my face, put on sweatpants and a T-shirt, and return. Robert is standing at the top of the stairs, ready to go down to his computer.

“That was a quick trip. Did you have a good time?” he asks, one foot already on the top step.

The question puts the past two days, their dissonance of tragedy and fear, lust and shame, in the space between us. They will not be so easy to forget. I look him in the eyes, then away, toward the bedroom
where Oliver and Izzy are. “I’m glad I’m home,” I answer. I point to the boys’ room, as though to say,
I’d better get in there
.

“You can tell me about it after,” he says. I watch him descend. His steps are light and quick, punctuated by a determined stomp off the last one. I walk into the boys’ room and lie down with them. I pick up the book and resume reading, using my children as momentary shields from the inevitable conversation waiting for me downstairs.