The O'Briens (27 page)

“What sort of lessons?” Margo asked.

“Dancing lessons?” asked Frankie.

“They want to learn to see things clearly, that's all,” their mother said.

“Are they learning the hootchy-koo?” asked Frankie.

“Why must you go all the way up there so often?” Margo said.

“The truth is a pathless land,” their mother said. Those words didn't sound like her. What could she mean? Why did she have to speak to them using someone else's words?

She'd married their father when he was building a railway through the mountains. Did she really not believe in him anymore?

WU SANTABARBARA CNCPMONTREAL

3089883-14232 CNCP

20 FEBRUARY 1931

TO: MR. J. O'BRIEN

O'BRIEN CAPITAL CONSTRUCTION LTD

SUN LIFE BUILDING MANSFIELD ST

MONTREAL CANADA

CABLE: WILDERNESS

SEAWALL $261.33 MATERIAL, $230 LABOUR, TOTAL $491.33. IT WILL STAND. LOVE MIKE

~

S.B. High was much bigger than Lower Canada College. Mike had never before sat in a classroom with girls. The teachers were easygoing compared to the brittle young Oxford and Cambridge men who'd taught him at LCC, with their ferocious sulks and rages. Lessons in unfamiliar subjects — Civics, U.S. history — consisted mostly of childish fables, like tales from a storybook. Students slept in class. Sometimes teachers nodded off as well; everyone at S.B. High seemed willing to tolerate a lot of boredom. Perhaps the sleepiness was caused by the mild, sunny weather. Everyone assumed Santa Barbara to be the best place in the world.

Anxiety pressed at his chest when he awoke in the mornings, but he finally had a routine: gathering his books, eating breakfast, starting the station wagon, driving into town. After dropping his sisters off at Marymount, he drove himself to school. On Saturdays he went for solitary drives up the coast or over San Marcos Pass into the Santa Ynez Valley, past cowtowns, ranches, and oilfields stuttered with steel derricks, pumps, and storage tanks. Sometimes he stopped for dusty hitchhikers — roustabouts, Mexican ranch hands, standing by the side of the road — but he really preferred being alone, driving fast with all windows down and the wind tearing in.

Whenever Iseult was up at Arya Vihara, he lay awake worrying about her breaking down in the mountains or having an accident. She drove too fast and recklessly for the mountain roads. The old Lincoln was an ungainly car and she never bothered checking the tires or oil pressure or seeing whether the radiator was full.

The truth is a pathless land.

No. Truth was a car that could be relied upon to get over Casitas Pass without boiling over or breaking down. Truth was concrete reinforced with steel, tied down with sleepers, backfilled, and strong enough to withstand the storms and waves, probably for all their lifetimes.

There was a quiet knock on his door. When he opened it, Margo was standing there with two bottles of the
3
.
2
beer that Lidia, their housekeeper, kept cool in the cellar.

“Mother's not home yet,” Margo said.

“I know.”

“Got any cigs? Let's go out on the porch. Don't wake up Frankie.”

Out on the porch he used his jackknife blade to open the beer bottles. Margo took a sip. “Do you miss Daddy? He's a crazy old bard, but I miss him. I miss my pals. She's in love with the swami. I hate her, I really do.”

“Don't say that.”

“All her talk about the truth — that's how people talk when they're doing something bad. It's creepy.”

“He's a teacher.”

“You can believe that if you want to,” Margo said.

They had been at Butterfly Beach almost three months by then but he felt more unhoused than ever. The night air was scented and chilly, smelling of flowers and brine.

“Don't you worry about Daddy?” Margo asked. “Where is he right now? Once she gets her stupid divorce Frankie and I will get tossed out of Marymount — she hasn't thought that one through. They'd never let us back at Sacred Heart either. And the St. Mary's Ball, forget it. My debutante season is shot. Tasch and Mary Cohen will be having fun all year and I won't know any boys.”

They finished the beer and flipped the red embers of their cigarettes down into the gravel driveway. After he went back to his room the stubborn moonlight slashing through the window still wouldn't let him sleep.

He had looked up divorce in reference books at the Santa Barbara Library. The only way to obtain a divorce in the province of Quebec was to petition for a private bill to be passed by the federal Parliament in Ottawa, and the only grounds were adultery. A Reno divorce was much simpler and took just six weeks' residence in the state of Nevada. There were divorce ranches where people stayed. Such a divorce would not be recognized in Montreal, but would that matter if she never went back there?

He rolled out of bed once more, pulled on dungarees and a sweatshirt. Their mother still wasn't home. Margo's light was off. The house was asleep. He quietly found his way downstairs. There was a flashlight in one of the kitchen drawers, but with the full moon he didn't need it. He went barefoot across the lawn and started down the concrete steps to the beach. The tide was high. A wave broke on the seawall and the spray splashed his legs. Rolling up his dungarees, he stepped down onto the soft, permeated sand as the surf was running out. Another roller exploding against the concrete wall drenched him thoroughly. As the water raced off the beach he ran out with it and dove in.

The ocean felt warm. A smaller wave rolled past, and almost without thinking he started swimming out to sea. The danger would be a wave strong enough to throw him back against the seawall. He saw the top of a big one approaching and ducked underneath. When he surfaced, he was thirty yards offshore. He saw the next wave coming, phosphorescent at its crest, and again he ducked under, swam through, and came up on the other side. He could feel the riptide, and knew he ought to swim back to the beach before it sucked him out any farther. Another roller was coming in. He was in a machinery of waves, each bigger than the last, or maybe it was just that he was getting tired of fighting them. Moonlight spread carelessly across the water. He would have to duck the next wave, then swim hard for shore to reach the steps before another wave slammed him into the wall.

He felt the next wave pass over like something passing through his body, a dangerously seductive pull that took willpower to resist. He started swimming against the backwash spilling off the canted beach. He got his feet planted in loose, wet sand and struggled out against the fizzing rush. He was halfway up the concrete staircase when the next wave pulverized against the wall, lashing him with spray, but he made it to the top and stepped onto the grass.

Back in his room, his limbs felt heavy. The sea had neutralized enough of his anxiety. For sleep the trick now was to focus on simple thoughts. Nothing emotional, just images of light in various rooms, in various patterns. Sunlight falling into rooms in their old Pine Avenue house. Chilly evening light in what could have been his nursery in the railway camp. Such memories were weightless, but his mind had retained them, or an impression of them, and by concentrating on them and letting go of everything else he could sleep.

~

On the first of April they all went up to Arya Vihara for a picnic. The Lincoln had a cracked oil pan and was in the garage getting repaired, so they took the old station wagon. Mike drove. They started along Foothills Road, past fields of flowers at Carpinteria. Climbing Casitas Pass, he kept the station wagon in second gear, worried that the frail old engine might throw a rod. When they finally pulled into the driveway at Arya Vihara, he saw a dark young man in white clothes sitting on the porch of the cottage, reading a newspaper. The porch was deep and shady, with bougainvillea spilling over the rails, potted geraniums on the steps. The young man put aside the paper and stood waiting to greet them. He did not smile as she introduced them, merely nodding at the mention of their names.

“And what have you brought?” he said, peering at the picnic basket Margo was carrying. “What goods are there, what treats have we to share?”

“Krishnaji,” said their mother. “I'm so happy. I so wanted you to meet the children.”

Krishnamurti didn't seem happy or unhappy to meet them. His face looked as though it had at one time been punched or beaten. His nose was like putty someone had pushed and bent. His teeth were white and his handshake delicate. He wore sandals; his feet were large and the toes had a heavy, taloned look. The sleeves of his cotton shirt were rolled up and his forearms were the colour of mahogany. Pages of a newspaper were scattered all over the porch as though it had been torn apart by voracious reading.

“I've promised the children a swim,” their mother was saying. “We'll go to the pond, then lunch at the cottage. We're so happy to be here, all together. Does that sound like fun?”

Mike could hear something in her breathing: the rasp that started when she was tired or something was provoking her asthma. She kept saying she was happy; maybe she wanted to sound happy.

“Oh, very much so,” said Krishnamurti.

“Well, children, let's head for the pond.”

“Where do we change?” said Margo.

Just then another slender Indian man and two white women came out of the cottage. The women were a mother and her middle-aged daughter and both were dark from the sun. Iseult took the girls inside to change in a bedroom while Mike changed in a bathroom.

Had she told Krishnamurti she was planning to get a Reno divorce?

Once upon a time his father had driven two hundred miles of railway grade through a sea of mountains. Where was he now? Maybe he was relieved they were gone. Maybe it was easier for him to be alone. Maybe all he wanted was to slide down the neck of a whisky bottle and disappear. Mike tried to imagine his father in a hotel room in New York City, voltage surging from a bottle and blowing all his circuits. What was wrong with him? Nothing. What was wrong with him? Everything.

In single file they walked across a meadow flaming with orange poppies, his mother in the lead, Krishnaji following her, then Mike and his sisters and the two white women and the other Indian man. Orange butterflies twitched over the grass. When they came to the sycamore woods at the edge of the meadow, the two women and the young Indian man disagreed about which was the best way to approach the pond without going near poison oak. Krishnamurti and their mother did not intervene, passively waiting for the matter to be sorted out. The other three could not agree and finally the man set off on his own. Krishnamurti and their mother followed the two women, the mother and daughter. The daughter was about Iseult's age.

“The truth is a pathless land,” Margo muttered as they traipsed through the fragrant, sun-heated woods. The pond when they reached it was fed by a stream that scrambled noisily over pebbles before deepening into a pool shaded by manzanita, cottonwoods, oaks, and sycamores.

Who would go in first? No one seemed eager. It was hard to judge how deep it was.

“I guess I will,” Margo said finally. “I'll go in with Frankie.”

Their mother unwrapped cucumber-and-tomato sandwiches and handed one each to Krishnamurti and the other young man, who had turned up at last. The two women refused the sandwiches she offered them.

“You eat too much, Iseult,” said the older woman. “It may not show on you because of your rapid metabolism, but it's not always good for the spirit, do you think?”

“Perhaps you're right,” he heard his mother say.

Margo and Frankie took off their tennis shoes and slipped into the water as quietly as deer. While they swam across the pond, then started duck-diving to see who could stay down longest, Mike lay on his back soaking up the hot sun and half listening to the women talking.

“We really must return to India within the year,” the older woman said. “If you want to come along, Iseult, you must help us organize the resources for our trip, or it simply won't happen.”

“I think what Iseult needs,” said the younger woman, “is to spend more time alone and develop a simpler consciousness. I always feel that you're scattered when you come up here. The aura is roiled, if you don't mind my saying so.”

“Krishnaji hates to think you see him as simply another cause, like your poor Mexicans,” said the older woman.

He saw his mother throw a glance at Krishnamurti, but he and the other man were eating their sandwiches and ignoring the women.

“We're not a charity case,” said the younger woman.

“Krishnaji,” his mother said, “do you think it wise to travel so much?”

“It does not matter,” Krishnamurti said. “Are there any pickles?”

“He enjoys travel, Iseult,” said the daughter. “Travel refreshes him.”

“Wouldn't it be better if people came to him instead?”

“You really mustn't interfere, Iseult,” the older woman said in a sharp voice.

“Stop it!” said Krishnaji. “Your hectoring makes me ill.”

“But we are concerned for you, Krishnaji,” the older woman said.

“There is nothing wrong in her questions. She is an honest woman,” Krishnamurti said. “More than you, somehow.”

The other young man gave a snort of muffled laughter. The two white women remained silent and Mike could sense their fury. They didn't like her, she must have figured that out. Why did she come up here anyway? Was she in love with this Krishnaji, so self-possessed and gloomy, with his taloned feet and brown arms?

The older woman stood up and her daughter got up too. “If you decide to stay for tiffin,” said the older woman, “do let us know, Iseult. We'll need some things from the village.”

The two women headed back through the sycamore woods. The girls were still splashing in the water. No one spoke. Minutes passed. Krishnaji and the other man lay on their backs on the dry, husky grass, hands clasped behind their heads; they were dozing. Iseult sat there. She wore a white linen dress and she wasn't wearing stockings; she had slipped off her shoes and her feet were bare. He couldn't really see her face under her sun hat, but she seemed to be watching the girls. She was very thin, he realized. Bony at her shoulders. Her calves and wrists were stringy and narrow. Frail. He'd never thought of her as frail before. He had supposed that all the weakness in the family was his father's, but now she was weakening too.