The Amateur Marriage (21 page)

Michael took it all in, intrigued in spite of himself, but Pauline trotted ahead with her shoulders hunched and her arms tightly folded. Twice she said she was cold; then finally she asked him to stop and let her unpack the sweater she’d brought. It was true that the air had a chill to it, as if San Francisco’s seasons, as well as its clocks, were lagging behind the East Coast’s. “Now you see I was right to want to keep our suitcase with us,” she told him as she wriggled her arms into her sleeves.

Michael sighed, and she said, “What.”

“The reason we kept the suitcase, Pauline, is that you were set on going first to Fleet Street.”

“Well? So? Can you blame me?”

“I’m not blaming you; I’m just saying—”

Although now he wondered what difference it made.

“I wanted to see my daughter!” Pauline cried. “I waited seven years, I flew clear across the continent, and then you asked me to wait some more just so you could dump your suitcase in some stupid rented room!”

“Poll—”

“And once we get there, what do you do? Stand there like a . . . Milquetoast. ‘Oh, excuse me very much, sir,’ you say. ‘You won’t let her out of your clutches? You refuse to let us see her? Fine, sir. Whatever you wish, sir.’”

“She’s over twenty-one, Pauline. She signed herself in of her own accord, so far as we know, and their policy is—”

“Oh, policy! Rules! What do I care about rules? I’m her mother and this is tearing me apart! It’s killing me! It’s eating me up! I can’t stand this anymore!”

Tears were streaming down her cheeks. She spun around and took off again, her purse bouncing on her hip and her back stiff and indignant. Michael picked up the suitcase and followed, but he didn’t try to reason with her.

What could he have said, anyhow?

On the corner a couple much like themselves—late forties, the man in a sport coat, the woman in a short skirt—stood admiring a psychedelic poster that was peeling off the side of a building. The man raised the camera that was slung around his neck, and Michael suddenly felt the way he had when they visited Karen during Parents’ Weekend last fall: he was just one more in a pack of stuffy oldsters doing their best to keep up with the young folk. And Pauline in her minidress looked clunky and ridiculous, her feathered blond hairdo laughably ornate compared to the flowing tresses of the two young girls crossing the street ahead of them.

When Michael had first heard about hippies—about the love-ins and the sit-ins and the antiwar protests, and tuning in and turning on and dropping out and such—he had secretly felt pleased. So Lindy had just been ahead of her time! And he and Pauline weren’t alone anymore!

He wondered now if the couple with the camera had come in search of a missing son or daughter themselves. But no, they had the look of people on vacation. They wouldn’t be taking photographs if they felt the way he and Pauline felt.

He caught up with her on the far curb and set his free hand on the small of her back. “That should be the tourist home, on the left,” he told her.

It was another rundown Victorian, with gray wooden steps that buckled beneath their feet and a handwritten sign above the doorbell,
DOESN’T WORK
, and the woman who answered their knock seemed run-down herself, still in her thirties but slack-faced and sullen, wearing a housecoat of a type Michael hadn’t seen since he moved out of the old neighborhood. “We’re the Antons,” he told her. She turned without a word and led them toward the rear of the house. The door of the last room stood open, exposing two narrow beds pushed together and a low, ugly vanity bearing a very old TV. “Bathroom’s across the hall,” the woman said. “Payment’s in advance, no checks. Nine dollars even.” She held forth the flat of her palm, and Michael counted the money into it. “Take that key on top of the TV if you go out,” she said. Then she left.

Go out? All Michael wanted to do was drop onto the nearer of the beds; never mind that it was barely past noon. He was so tired that even this bleak, stark room seemed like a haven. But Pauline said, “You want to use the bathroom before we leave?”

“Leave for where?”

“Michael! We have to go find our grandson!”

“Right now?” he asked.

“He’s waiting for us! Don’t you want to meet him?”

No, he didn’t, really. This child had been sprung on them too suddenly. Most grandparents were given nine months to prepare themselves. Shoot, they were given years, as a rule, while their daughters courted, got engaged, had formal weddings . . . But Pauline was so eager, with her tears wiped away now and her face lit up and animated. So he said, “All right, hon,” and went off to use the bathroom.

When they started out again, they disagreed about which direction to take. Michael knew for a fact that Haight Street lay to their right. Already the neighborhood’s general design was becoming clear to him. But Pauline said no, the landlady had told her it was a left. So they stood there on the steps while she dug through her purse for her notes. Out came her billfold, her cosmetic kit, her eyeglass case . . . and a tiny red metal fire engine still in its cellophane-windowed box. Michael pretended not to notice, but when she said, “Yes, turn right. Didn’t I say turn right?” he told her, “Sure, hon,” and reached out to cup her elbow as they descended the steps.

The air smelled like chili con carne. It reminded him how long it had been since breakfast—if you could call that limp, stale pastry and canned orange juice on the plane a breakfast. “Hey, Poll?” he said. “Maybe we could take the little boy out for a hot dog.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“The landlady would probably be glad to get rid of him for a couple of hours.”

“Couple of hours?” Pauline asked. She stopped walking and looked at him. “What are you talking about? He’s not the landlady’s responsibility; he’s yours and mine.”

“Well, but—”

“We’re taking him for good, Michael. We’re packing him up and taking him with us, because we are all he’s got.”

Michael had known this, of course, and yet somehow he hadn’t absorbed the full implications. He said, “Right this minute we’re taking him?”

“Where has your
mind
been?”

“Well, it’s just that . . . I guess I was thinking, you know, we’d wait till we had Lindy too.”

“When might that be, though?” Pauline asked him. “We can’t leave a child unattended in some rooming house! We have to collect him immediately. But what to do after that . . . I don’t know. I don’t know.” They started walking again. “That person at the retreat didn’t give us the faintest idea how long Lindy might be staying there.”

“I’m going to phone the guy this evening,” Michael said. He had already decided that. Pauline was right; he had given in too easily. “Who knows, she may already be coming out of whatever it was. Lots of times, people have these flash-in-the-pan bad spells. But if she isn’t, I’ll say, ‘Look. We feel she would do better on home ground.’ Why, Baltimore’s got the best medical experts in the country! And if he still tries to keep us from seeing her—”

“Here’s the place,” Pauline said, coming to a stop.

She was looking at a house even more ramshackle than its neighbors, although it must once have been the height of elegance. The double front door had two oval windows, one with an etched, beveled-glass pane and the other covered over with cardboard. Lindy had climbed these very steps, skirting the one that was rotten. She had turned this very doorknob, which hung loose above a missing lock that was now just a shredded hole in the wood.

“It’s the number she told me, all right,” Pauline said, clearly wishing it weren’t.

They climbed the steps themselves, and Michael pressed the cracked rubber button to the left of the door.

“How do I look?” Pauline asked him.

“You look fine, hon.”

It seemed odd to him that she would care, when they were meeting a mere child.

A young girl with pale, stringy hair opened the door and cocked her head at them. She wore a blue gingham dress, long-sleeved and ankle-length like something from pioneer days. Another boarder, Michael assumed—maybe even another missing daughter. But Pauline said, “Destiny?”

“Yes?”

“Well, hi! I’m Pauline. This is my husband, Michael.”

“Oh, good,” the girl said. “You got here.”

Pauline stepped into the entrance hall, but Michael felt he needed a moment to adjust. (The word “landlady” had conjured up an entirely different image.)

“I didn’t want to call the welfare people if there was any way around it,” Destiny was telling Pauline in a low, confiding voice.

“Welfare!”

“I don’t trust those people as far as I can throw them. But I knew I’d have to do something. He just stays shut away in their room; he won’t leave it no matter what. Sometimes I hear him tiptoe off to the bathroom, but then when I start up the stairs he scoots back and slams the door.”

She was leading them up the stairs as she spoke, past brittle, yellowed wallpaper curling off the walls. The house smelled of mice. The banister looked sticky, and Michael avoided touching it.

“I’ve been taking him his meals but I don’t see as he’s eaten,” Destiny was saying. “Of course, I haven’t a clue what a kid that age would like. I say, ‘Here! You care for some lentils?’ but he just stares at me so I set down the bowl and leave. Well, I do want to give him his space, right?”

She turned, having reached the top of the stairs, and raised her transparent eyebrows. Two complicated brass earrings hung nearly to her shoulders.

“What’s his name?” Pauline asked her.

“Pagan.”

“Pagan?”
Michael and Pauline said together.

She shrugged. The earrings tinkled. “What can I tell you,” she said. “His mom always struck me as kind of wifty, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

She turned again and started down the dark hall, passing two closed doors before she stopped at the third. “Knock-knock!” she called. “Anyone home?”

No answer.

“Coming in, then!” She turned the knob.

The room was scarcely bigger than a closet, with a single, clouded window and water-stained ivory walls. On the bare floor lay a mattress heaped with tangled blankets and clothing. While Michael watched, one piece of clothing stirred. A small boy sat up and blinked at them. Then he scooted backwards to the far edge of the mattress.

“Hello, Pagan,” Pauline said softly.

He stared at her without answering. His eyes were a liquid brown and his hair was black and shaggy. It was
foreign
hair, Michael thought—a deeper, shinier black than any Anton’s hair. There were bluish shadows beneath his eyes, which gave him a world-weary look although he couldn’t have been much older than three.

“I’m your grandma!” Pauline was saying. “Your mommy’s mother. This is your grandpa! We’ve come all the way from Baltimore, Maryland, to see you!”

Silence.

“I’ll just get his things together,” Destiny said. “He doesn’t have all that many.”

So she really was expecting them to take him with them. Michael knew he should be used to the notion by now, but he felt a thump of shock even so. He watched Destiny drift about, collecting a T-shirt here and a sweater there and folding them over one arm. When she approached the mattress, Pagan scrambled to his feet, hugging a small blanket. His clothes were unexpectedly conventional (a striped red jersey, jeans, red sneakers) but very dirty, and his fingernails were rimmed with black. Because the mattress occupied the entire length of the far wall, he had no choice but to step into the center of the room, and the sight of such a small, frightened child standing so undefended wrenched Michael’s heart. Instinctively he drew backward, almost into the hall, to show that he meant no harm. Pauline, on the other hand, rushed forward. “Sweetheart,” she said, and she dropped to her knees in front of the child and folded her arms around him. “Oh, honey pie, sweetheart, oh, my poor, sweet little one!”

Michael was horrified. So was Destiny, evidently, for she straightened, holding a jacket, and gaped at the two of them.

For a moment, Pagan stood frozen within the circle of Pauline’s arms. Then he dropped his head to her shoulder. One grimy little hand reached around to pat her back.

Michael felt his eyes fill. He had to look away.

“I guess I’ll just donate a pillowcase for you to carry his stuff in,” Destiny said finally. She started cramming what she had gathered into a pillowcase more gray than white. “His mom has their only bag. I packed it up for her after she left, and my husband took it to Fleet Street.”

Destiny had a husband? Somehow, Michael hadn’t pictured that. He watched her shake out a sheet and stoop to retrieve a red sock. “Say,” he said, suddenly hopeful. “Do you happen to know if Lindy, if our daughter, might be married?”

“Not that
I
ever heard,” Destiny said cheerfully.

“I was just wondering about, ah, Pagan’s dad.”

“Oh, you know how those things can be.”

He didn’t know. He waited, in case she cared to explain. On the floor, Pauline was crooning, “It’s all, all, all right, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be fine now.”

Michael said, “Well, could you tell us a little more about what happened here?”

“Happened?” Destiny said.

“How Lindy, um, freaked out?”

Destiny flicked a glance toward Pagan. “I don’t guess now would be a good moment,” she said.

“Oh. Okay.”

“For sure, she’s in a great place, though! The retreat is
great.
She’s one lucky lady.”

Michael said, “The thing of it is, we had planned to take her home with us. Then when we got there we found we weren’t even allowed to talk to her. I worry she’s being kept against her will.”

“Nah, it’s cool. You don’t want to interrupt her in mid-birth.”

Michael had been about to say more, but he closed his mouth abruptly. He felt he’d landed in one of those science fiction movies where the hero all at once understands that everybody else’s mind has been taken over by aliens.