The Mother Garden (4 page)

“Oh. Sure,” I said.

“So, I was thinking about having breakfast at the lunch counter near your house on Saturday, I guess that's tomorrow, and I was thinking that would be a great time for us all to get together.”

I looked over at my father, who was standing, hypnotized, in front of the television. He turned off all the lights; the colors from the screen bathed him in reds and blues. It made him look spooky.

“Tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yeah, how does that sound?”

“Duncan, I don't know how to say this but—”

“What?” Duncan asked.

“Well. It's just that things have been topsy-turvy.”

“Don't overthink it,” he said. “You guys just meet me at the counter at eleven. That's not too late, right?”

Now I was in a bind. I could show up alone and Duncan would think I had been lying; I could stand him up and it would seem like I had been lying; or I could bring my father and hope that he behaved, well, fatherly.

“Hey,” I said to my father after Duncan hung up. “We have breakfast plans.” He glanced over his shoulder at me.

“Says who?”

“Says Duncan.” My father looked at me blankly. “My ex-boyfriend.”

“You had a boyfriend?” my father sneered.

“We're meeting at the lunch counter at eleven tomorrow.”

“Fine with me,” he said, cracking his knuckles.

I looked at the lines of my father's body. Though not a tall man, he did have a sort of presence. His build didn't indicate a delicate spine—no gorgeously stacked vertebrae. Instead he looked bolstered up by a large pole of metal.

I thought about the way that blood goes through the body. The liquid seems to know exactly which way to go, as if every cell in the body has a tiny, thoughtful brain. I thought of my father's blood, my father's bones, the ligaments that held him upright like that, his arms crossed, his legs apart.

How smart the body is. I closed my eyes and felt my own blood racing through my veins, making my hands and feet warm. I wished I could ask those tiny brains what to do.

My father's Chinese food melt lay half eaten on a plate on the coffee table. Some noodles had fallen to the floor, glued there by orange cheese. He'd already gone through two beers, the bottles wedged haphazardly between the couch and the wall. His socks, as usual, had been tossed like bait into the center of the room.

In that moment, my impatience with him ebbed. I wasn't filled with a strong, peaceful love or anything. I just felt resigned. And this felt like progress.

“So, eleven, then,” I said. “I guess we'll just walk over there a little before, okay?”

My father didn't turn around. “Whatever you say. You're the boss around here.” He changed the channel. Strange shadows came and went.

“I guess I'm going to bed now,” I said. “Good night.”

“Mhmm,” went my father and then guffawed at the commercial.

I felt heavy and empty; I lay in bed for a long time without sleeping. I would get up in the morning, clean the house, get dressed, have coffee so I was alert for the lunch counter encounter. Somewhere, in between thoughts, I fell asleep.

I woke exhausted, a feeling of failure in my bones. I looked at the clock. Ten-thirty.

“Shit,” I said, throwing myself out of bed. “Fuck fuck fuck.” I threw on a robe and dashed into the bathroom. I began to strip off my pajamas when I realized that the bathroom was spotless—the sink wiped clean, the toilet seat down. The razor and shaving cream that usually crowded my toothbrush jar off the shelf were gone. I put my robe back on and went to find my father.

Each room was completely clean. I knocked on my father's door.

“Father?” I called. And then, “Dad?”

I cracked it open. My father's Tupperware storage containers of clothes and shoes were gone. The notebooks of his phone messages, also gone. Only the futon remained, sheetless, and the empty bookshelf.

I went back into the living room and sat on the couch. I thought of Duncan waiting expectantly for me at the lunch counter and me without a father to prove myself by.

“He's gone,” I'd say. “I woke up this morning and he vanished as suddenly as he came, like a dream father.” Duncan would look sorry for me, but not in the right way. “But,” I'd say, “it wasn't a dream.”

The stillness of the house clung to my skin, sticky and disconcerting.

I worked myself into a panic, searching the house for details that would prove that I had had a father. He couldn't just come into my life, turn my house on its head, and then vanish without a trace. There had to be a note, a photograph, something.

My head began to pound. I was frantically turning the sofa cushions over, looking for beer bottles and petrified cheese when I heard it, a soft whimpering coming from the side door. For a moment I couldn't move. And then I walked over and placed my cheek against the cool whiteness of the door.

I
T'S THE WATCHES AGAIN. DRAPED ON THE EDGE OF THE
bathtub like that, they look like little corpses. And in the bedroom, it's the ties. Two dozen lie across the soft lace bedspread: yellow paisley, turquoise polka dot, ducks flying on a flat navy sky. Neil's father, Geoff, was a loud dresser. And a pack rat.

“How long is this going to last?” I ask our dog, Winston, as I roll each tie into a coil. Winston flops down on the rug and sighs.

Two years before Geoff, Neil's father, died, Mindy, Neil's mother, caught him in bed with one of his students. Geoff taught sociology at the junior college. The young woman was twenty. Mindy said, “All I saw were her legs.”

Sometimes I try to re-create the scene, using just that detail. Mindy stopped home to get the sneakers she forgot; she was on her way to the gym between appointments. She wore spandex leggings and a fuzzy blue headband. Geoff must have been on top (which makes sense given the age thing, the power inequity), overwhelming the girl, whose legs were curled around his thick middle.

It can't be true that she saw
only
the girl's legs. She must have seen her feet, too. And Geoff's legs. And probably his rear. Or maybe they were under the covers, the girl's legs sticking out, and they really were all she saw.

Mindy apparently said “Pardon me” and left the house, returning the next day to pack clothes and dishes in a dozen huge boxes. She never returned.

Neil hasn't forgiven her for not coming to Geoff's deathbed. But Mindy was steadfast.

“He made his decision,” she kept saying. So Neil went to the hospital every day without her.

When Neil has bad days, he sits on the sofa playing with the cord of the blinds. He stares at the princess tree in front of our apartment, stares into the wood like he is going to infiltrate it. He locks his large jaw and looks petulant—thirteen instead of thirty.

Then the objects start to appear. His father's junk—the ties, the watches, the collection of leftist pamphlets from the 1950s. There's a box of argyle vests, a box of tweed jackets, a box of ski hats. When I get home from work the kitchen looks like a tag sale, objects arranged with like objects, sometimes in subcategories of color, sometimes just flung out of the boxes at random.

Five months ago, a month before Geoff's death, I met Gwen Eliot, a friend of a friend who'd recently moved to the Bay Area. I didn't think much of her, but Neil liked her immediately. I'd come home from work to find Gwen and Neil in the midst of a poker game or making deviled eggs. Now she calls nearly every weekend to go for walks with Winston or to ride pedal boats out at the pond. Lately, plans with Gwen have gotten more involved. Last weekend she and Neil took a surfing lesson (Gwen claimed her voucher was good for only two people, not three) while I sat on the windy beach in my sweater, trying to keep my magazine's pages flat.

That's where he is tonight. “At movies with G,” his note reads. “Midnight showing.” I wad up the note and leave it on the vanity. It's the third note this week.

When I wake up in the morning, the box of ties is gone and Winston slaps his tail happily against my head. Neil's next to me in bed, the newspaper unfolded in front of him, though he's staring at me. The sun hits his eyelashes and they look bleached, almost yellow. His Adam's apple jiggles slightly.

“What's going on?” I ask. Winston, pleased that I am finally awake, stands and rubs his cold nose in my eye.

“It's a gorgeous day,” Neil says. Light soaks our sheer curtains; the white walls bang with it.

“It's California,” I say. “It's always a gorgeous day.” But that doesn't dampen his desire to go out, and before I can put in my two cents, he's on the phone with Gwen.

“I want to get out of the city,” Gwen says. She hasn't touched her sandwich. It sits there, pale as her skin. “You wouldn't believe the freaks I had to deal with this morning. One woman started screaming that she saw me put nut powder in her garden shake.
I'm allergic to nuts!
God. And then I said someone put nut powder in something she ate long before I did and I got a lecture from Rushelle on customer service.”

Neil snorts.

“Let's get the hell out of Dodge.”

“Where do you want to go?” I ask.

“Someplace scary,” Gwen says.

Winston waits patiently under a tree in the parking lot. Neil unties him and they climb into the backseat together. The dark vinyl is so hot that it takes a minute to settle on the seats. A rich doggy smell abounds. We roll down the windows.

Gwen turns on the radio. She's an aspiring actress. Her next audition, she announced over lunch, is for a Christian channel planning a new drama about “the angels that live within.” (Who knows how her agent swung that one—Gwen's got dark wiry hair and a soaring Jewish nose.) She trains by listening to the evangelical stations. Today a deep, resonant voice is saying:
You must know. You must know in your heart how to walk alongside him. With faith, the Scripture tells us. Walk with faith. You may question that word, but it is not to be questioned. See the light in faith!

We take 80 out of Berkeley and follow it east. We drive and drive. Gwen wants to find a place where nothing is.

“Light in faith,”
she booms.

I turn off the radio. She shrugs and puts her feet on the dashboard, grabs her front tooth with her fingers. Neil and Gwen begin a rousing round of Mustache, No Mustache. A BMW convertible pulls up beside us and they both scream “No mustache!” But they're wrong. The man has a full beard that seems to begin right under his eyes.

“Damn,” Neil says.

“Maybe we should just pull off on one of these farm roads,” Neil says after a while.

“Yeah,” Gwen says, letting go of her tooth.

I pull off. We drive out past some fields, fenced with barbed wire. After a while, the fences give way and we drive down a dirt road through corn, then through something I don't recognize.

“Turn down there,” Gwen says. After a mile or two, we pull over. Shrubby plants grow on either side of us. It's not scary here. Everything is in rows. Gwen gets out of the car.

“Is this soy?”
she bellows, her thin mouth thinning further with the effort, her eyes bugging. Then she starts to cackle. She learned this exercise in acting school. Scream what should be quiet.

Neil unzips his pants and pees on the crop.

“Gross,” says Gwen. “Some family is going to eat that.”

“Or some cow,” Neil says.

“It's better than the shit they're spraying on it,” I say.

“What're we going to do?” Neil asks. He looks boyish in his wrinkled hiking pants and pea green shirt. He looks fun.

Sometimes I catch Neil looking at Gwen and I see a fog there, like he's imagining what it would be like to cross the invisible border that separates one person from another. Neil and I have been together so long that when he looks at Gwen like that, I find I'm curious, as if part of my own body has sloughed off and is misbehaving.

Even so, when Gwen takes off her shirt, I feel a kick of dread.

“Let's run naked through the soy!” she says. Gwen has a scar on her stomach from a surgery she had during adolescence. It's shiny and pink, like burnished stoneware. Her bra's a complicated crimson number with cheap lace and a little black bow between her breasts. When she takes off her shorts, her underwear matches. Maybe she planned this naked outing just to show off her fashion sense.

Neil looks like he's about to sink into the gravel. His hands go to block his crotch. “I'm going for a walk,” he says.

“I'm not getting undressed,” I say to Gwen.

“Suit yourself,” she says, sliding out of her underwear. Her dark pubic hair is shaved into a stripe. And then she takes off her bra, revealing the large silver hoop in her nipple. Leave it to Gwen not to stop at a tiny ring. She does a little bunny hop and the ring swings up and down as she lands. She slides her painted toenails back into her ballet flats and prances through the shrubby plants, waving her arms around. Winston barks big, hollow barks from the backseat of the car.

“Let Winston out!” Gwen calls. I do and he runs after Gwen, trying to figure out what to make of it all.

It's possible, people say, that the only available meaning is in the moment: the field, the sun on my dark hair, the wiggle of Gwen's fleshy ass. Existence is its own reward. No one on earth is having a moment quite like mine. This is my prize: a boyfriend obsessed with his dead dad's watches, hiding his erection behind the car, and a friend whom I really can't stand.

Winston has regained an ounce of puppyhood. He crouches and jumps against naked Gwen as she leaps around. A few pink welts appear on her stomach where his claws scrape. She laughs and growls at the dog.

“That's not a great idea, Gwen,” I say. She smiles, dimples sucking into her face.

“A-rrrrrrrr,” she says to Winston.

“Grrr-arrrr,” Winston says back to her. Gwen gets on her knees and pushes Winston's head down with her hands. The dog pops up and barks joyfully, then picks up a long, misshapen pod and shakes it in his jaws. Gwen grabs it and holds it above Winston's head. I imagine Winston putting his furry arms around Gwen, leaning in toward her, their tongues entwined, the two of them toppling over in bestial bliss. How jealous would Neil be? And then it's all pretty fast—a scream and blood on Gwen's hand and the dog running off to cower near the car.

“OhmyGod,” she says.

Neil comes out from the crop. “What's happening?”

Gwen is making little gasping noises. Her bottom lip keeps drooping, exposing her lower teeth. She takes her hand off her breast and there's blood all over it. The silver hoop glitters beneath her on the dirt.

“Fucking dog,” she cries.

Neil goes over to the car, takes Winston's towel out, and delivers it to Gwen, who bunches it up and sticks it on her ripped nipple.

“Ow,” she gasps.

I can't move. If I move, I'm afraid I'll do what I'm tempted to do, which is laugh.

“Just sit for a minute,” Neil says. But already I hear a motor coming from somewhere.

“Fuck,” Gwen says, stumbling up. There's dirt on her pale legs. A little strand of foliage hangs from her pubic stripe. She hunches over herself. Neil grabs her pants and shirt, and as he hands them to her, we see the tractor turning down the road.

Winston lies down. He rests his head on his paws and makes guilty, sorry eyes.

“Can you do something?” Neil says to me.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“Well, help her.”

“Hold this for me,” Gwen says, gesturing to the towel wadded on her breast. I hold the towel in place as she steps into her jeans and will myself to behave.

“What the hell is going on here,” the man on the tractor yells. He cuts the engine and swings himself down from the high seat. “My guys said they saw some car turn down here. This is private property.” He's bright red—from his hair to his face to his T-shirt—and he's sweating. He tromps down the road.

“Fuck,” Gwen whispers and bats my hand away.

“What in God's name?” the man says.

I silently dare Gwen to do it, to drop the towel and scream
“Is this your soy, sir?”
But I know she's got that joie de vivre only when it comes to Neil. Her one bare breast stands out, brave survivor that it is. The man stares.

“We were lost,” Gwen says. The man nods and looks over at Neil.

“Get out of here,” he says.

“I'm sorry.” Neil opens the back door of the car. “Winston,” he calls.

The man walks into the crop a little way to see if we've damaged anything—or to see if we've planted little devils there.

“I got your license plate. If I find anything wrong, I have a brother at the sheriff's.”

We drive silently back toward Berkeley. Every few miles Neil leans forward to ask Gwen how she's doing.

The first affair my father had was with my baby-sitter when I was ten. My mom was training to be a nurse and worked nights. Cassie, a student at the local university, had thick caramel-colored bangs and a swimmer's body. At first, Cassie would leave when my dad arrived. Then she started staying for dinner. Usually, when my dad came home, he ignored me, poured some bourbon, and sat by the stereo listening to Motown. So it thrilled me to stay up playing Monopoly with them, night after night. My dad groaned theatrically when I bought a hotel on Park Place. “She's a real entrepreneur!” he said. “A real go-getter!” He tousled my hair, just like dads in commercials. Cassie giggled, tilted her head back, opening her mouth slightly. During those long Monopoly games, she always laughed with her tongue slightly out.

I don't remember what I knew about sex at the time. But I remember being sent to my room. I was playing veterinarian and in a well-meaning frenzy I cut off a stuffed beaver's ear with my mom's pinking shears. I wandered into the hall, panicked, beaver in hand. My father and Cassie were in the office with the door closed. I could hear Cassie sighing.