Where I'm Calling From (25 page)

I’m thinking about chimney sweeps—all that stuff I heard from J.P.— when for some reason I start to think about a house my wife and I once lived in. That house didn’t have a chimney, so I don’t know what makes me remember it now. But I remember the house and how we’d only been in there a few weeks when I heard a noise outside one morning. It was Sunday morning and it was still dark in the bedroom.

But there was this pale light coming in from the bedroom window. I listened. I could hear something scrape against the side of the house. I jumped out of bed and went to look.

“My God!” my wife says, sitting up in bed and shaking the hair away from her face. Then she starts to laugh. “It’s Mr. Venturini,” she says. “I forgot to tell you. He said he was coming to paint the house today. Early. Before it gets too hot. I forgot all about it,” she says, and laughs. “Come on back to bed, honey. It’s just him.”

“In a minute,” I say. I push the curtain away from the window. Outside, this old guy in white coveralls is standing next to his ladder. The sun is just starting to break above the mountains. The old guy and I look each other over. It’s the landlord, all right—this old guy in coveralls. But his coveralls are too big for him. He needs a shave, too. And he’s wearing this baseball cap to cover his bald head. Goddamn it, I think, if he isn’t a weird old fellow. And a wave of happiness comes over me that I’m not him—that I’m me and that I’m inside this bedroom with my wife.

He jerks his thumb toward the sun. He pretends to wipe his forehead. He’s letting me know he doesn’t have all that much time. He breaks into a grin. It’s then I realize I’m naked. I look down at myself. I look at him again and shrug. What did he expect?

My wife laughs. “Come on,” she says. “Get back in this bed. Right now. This minute. Come on back to bed.”

I let go of the curtain. But I keep standing there at the window. I can see the old fellow nod to himself like he’s saying, “Go on, sonny, go back to bed. I understand.” He tugs on the bill of his cap. Then he sets about his business. He picks up his bucket. He starts climbing the ladder.

I lean back into the step behind me now and cross one leg over the other. Maybe later this afternoon I’ll try calling my wife again. And then I’ll call to see what’s happening with my girlfriend. But I don’t want to get her mouthy kid on the line. If I do call, I hope he’ll be out somewhere doing whatever he does when he’s not around the house. I try to remember if I ever read any Jack London books. I can’t remember. But there was a story of his I read in high school. “To Build a Fire,” it was called. This guy in the Yukon is freezing. Imagine it—he’s actually going to freeze to death if he can’t get a fire going. With a fire, he can dry his socks and things and warm himself.

He gets his fire going, but then something happens to it. A branchful of snow drops on it. It goes out.

Meanwhile, it’s getting colder. Night is coming on.

I bring some change out of my pocket. I’ll try my wife first. If she answers, I’ll wish her a Happy New Year. But that’s it. I won’t bring up business. I won’t raise my voice. Not even if she starts something.

She’ll ask me where I’m calling from, and I’ll have to tell her. I won’t say anything about New Year’s resolutions. There’s no way to make a joke out of this. After I talk to her, I’ll call my girlfriend. Maybe I’ll call her first. I’ll just have to hope I don’t get her kid on the line. “Hello, sugar,” I’ll say when she answers. “It’s me.”

That summer Wes rented a furnished house north of Eureka from a recovered alcoholic named Chef.

Then he called to ask me to forget what I had going and to move up there and live with him. He said he was on the wagon. I knew about that wagon. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He called again and said, Edna, you can see the ocean from the front window. You can smell salt in the air. I listened to him talk. He didn’t slur his words. I said, I’ll think about it. And I did. A week later he called again and said, Are you coming? I said I was still thinking. He said, We’ll start over. I said, If I come up there, I want you to do something for me. Name it, Wes said. I said, I want you to try and be the Wes I used to know.

The old Wes. The Wes I married. Wes began to cry, but I took it as a sign of his good intentions. So I said, All right, I’ll come up.

Wes had quit his girlfriend, or she’d quit him—I didn’t know, didn’t care. When I made up my mind to go with Wes, I had to say goodbye to my friend. My friend said, You’re making a mistake. He said, Don’t do this to me. What about us? he said. I said, I have to do it for Wes’s sake. He’s trying to stay sober.

You remember what that’s like. I remember, my friend said, but I don’t want you to go. I said, I’ll go for the summer. Then I’ll see. I’ll come back, I said. He said, What about me? What about my sake? Don’t come back, he said.

We drank coffee, pop, and all kinds of fruit juice that summer. The whole summer, that’s what we had to drink. I found myself wishing the summer wouldn’t end. I knew better, but after a month of being with Wes in Chefs house, I put my wedding ring back on. I hadn’t worn the ring in two years. Not since the night Wes was drunk and threw his ring into a peach orchard.

Wes had a little money, so I didn’t have to work. And it turned out Chef was letting us have the house for almost nothing. We didn’t have a telephone. We paid the gas and light and shopped for specials at the Safeway. One Sunday afternoon Wes went out to get a sprinkler and came back with something for me.

He came back with a nice bunch of daisies and a straw hat. Tuesday evenings we’d go to a movie. Other nights Wes would go to what he called his Don’t Drink meetings. Chef would pick him up in his car at the door and drive him home again afterward. Some days Wes and I would go fishing for trout in one of the freshwater lagoons nearby. We’d fish off the bank and take all day to catch a few little ones. They’ll do fine, I’d say, and that night I’d fry them for supper. Sometimes I’d take off my hat and fall asleep on a blanket next to my fishing pole. The last thing I’d remember would be clouds passing overhead toward the central valley. At night, Wes would take me in his arms and ask me if I was still his girl.

Our kids kept their distance. Cheryl lived with some people on a farm in Oregon. She looked after a herd of goats and sold the milk. She kept bees and put up jars of honey. She had her own life, and I didn’t blame her. She didn’t care one way or the other about what her dad and I did so long as we didn’t get her into it. Bobby was in Washington working in the hay. After the haying season, he planned to work in the apples. He had a girl and was saving his money. I wrote letters and signed them, “Love always.”

One afternoon Wes was in the yard pulling weeds when Chef drove up in front of the house. I was working at the sink. I looked and saw Chefs big car pull in. I could see his car, the access road and the freeway, and, behind the freeway, the dunes and the ocean. Clouds hung over the water. Chef got out of his car and hitched his pants. I knew there was something. Wes stopped what he was doing and stood up. He was wearing his gloves and a canvas hat. He took off the hat and wiped, his face with the back of his hand. Chef walked over and put his arm around Wes’s shoulders. Wes took off one of his gloves. I went to the door. I heard Chef say to Wes God knows he was sorry but he was going to have to ask us to leave at the end of the month. Wes pulled off his other glove. Why’s that, Chef? Chef said his daughter, Linda, the woman Wes used to call Fat Linda from the time of his drinking days, needed a place to live and this place was it. Chef told Wes that Linda’s husband had taken his fishing boat out a few weeks back and nobody had heard from him since. She’s my own blood, Chef said to Wes. She’s lost her husband. She’s lost her baby’s father. I can help. I’m glad I’m in a position to help, Chef said. I’m sorry, Wes, but you’ll have to look for another house. Then Chef hugged Wes again, hitched his pants, and got in his big car and drove away.

Wes came inside the house. He dropped his hat and gloves on the carpet and sat down in the big chair.

Chef’s chair, it occurred to me. Chefs carpet, even. Wes looked pale. I poured two cups of coffee and gave one to him. It’s all right, I said. Wes, don’t worry about it, I said. I sat down on Chef’s sofa with my coffee.

Fat Linda’s going to live here now instead of us, Wes said. He held his cup, but he didn’t drink from it.

Wes, don’t get stirred up, I said.

Her man will turn up in Ketchikan, Wes said. Fat Linda’s husband has simply pulled out on them. And who could blame him? Wes said. Wes said if it came to that, he’d go down with his ship, too, rather than live the rest of his days with Fat Linda and her kid. Then Wes put his cup down next to his gloves. This has been a happy house up to now, he said.

We’ll get another house, I said.

Not like this one, Wes said. It wouldn’t be the same, anyway. This house has been a good house for us.

This house has good memories to it. Now Fat Linda and her kid will be in here, Wes said. He picked up his cup and tasted from it.

It’s Chef’s house, I said. He has to do what he has to do.

I know that, Wes said. But I don’t have to like it.

Wes had this look about him. I knew that look. He kept touching his lips with his tongue. He kept thumbing his shirt under his waistband. He got up from the chair and went to the window. He stood looking out at the ocean and at the clouds, which were building up. He patted his chin with his fingers like he was thinking about something. And he was thinking.

Go easy, Wes, I said.

She wants me to go easy, Wes said. He kept standing there.

But in a minute he came over and sat next to me on the sofa. He crossed one leg over the other and began fooling with the buttons on his shirt. I took his hand. I started to talk. I talked about the summer.

But I caught myself talking like it was something that had happened in the past. Maybe years back. At any rate, like something that was over. Then I started talking about the kids. Wes said he wished he could do it over again and do it right this time.

They love you, I said.

No, they don’t, he said.

I said, Someday, they’ll understand things.

Maybe, Wes said. But it won’t matter then.

You don’t know, I said.

I know a few things, Wes said, and looked at me. I know I’m glad you came up here. I won’t forget you did it, Wes said.

I’m glad, too, I said. I’m glad you found this house, I said.

Wes snorted. Then he laughed. We both laughed. That Chef, Wes said, and shook his head. He threw us a knuckleball, that son of a bitch. But I’m glad you wore your ring. I’m glad we had us this time together, Wes said.

Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn’t hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.

Wes fixed his eyes on me. He said, Then I suppose we’d have to be somebody else if that was the case.

Somebody we’re not. I don’t have that kind of supposing left in me. We were born who we are. Don’t you see what I’m saying?

I said I hadn’t thrown away a good thing and come six hundred miles to hear him talk like this.

He said, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk like somebody I’m not. I’m not somebody else. If I was somebody else, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. If I was somebody else, I wouldn’t be me. But I’m who I am. Don’t you see?

Wes, it’s all right, I said. I brought his hand to my cheek. Then, I don’t know, I remembered how he was when he was nineteen, the way he looked running across this field to where his dad sat on a tractor, hand over his eyes, watching Wes run toward him. We’d just driven up from California. I got out with Cheryl and Bobby and said, There’s Grandpa. But they were just babies.

Wes sat next to me patting his chin, like he was trying to figure out the next thing. Wes’s dad was gone and our kids were grown up. I looked at Wes and then I looked around Chefs living room at Chefs things, and I thought, We have to do something now and do it quick.

Hon, I said. Wes, listen to me.

What do you want? he said. But that’s all he said. He seemed to have made up his mind. But, having made up his mind, he was in no hurry. He leaned back on the sofa, folded his hands in his lap, and closed his eyes. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t have to.

I said his name to myself. It was an easy name to say, and I’d been used to saying it for a long time. Then I said it once more. This time I said it out loud. Wes, I said.

He opened his eyes. But he didn’t look at me. He just sat where he was and looked toward the window.

Fat Linda, he said. But I knew it wasn’t her. She was nothing. Just a name. Wes got up and pulled the drapes and the ocean was gone just like that. I went in to start supper. We still had some fish in the icebox. There wasn’t much else. We’ll clean it up tonight, I thought, and that will be the end of it.

Carlyle was in a spot. He’d been in a spot all summer, since early June when his wife had left him. But up until a little while ago, just a few days before he had to start meeting his classes at the high school, Carlyle hadn’t needed a sitter. He’d been the sitter. Every day and every night he’d attended to the children. Their mother, he told them, was away on a long trip.

Debbie, the first sitter he contacted, was a fat girl, nineteen years old, who told Carlyle she came from a big family. Kids loved her, she said. She offered a couple of names for reference. She penciled them on a piece of notebook paper. Carlyle took the names, folded the piece of paper, and put it in his shirt pocket. He told her he had meetings the next day. He said she could start to work for him the next morning. She said, “Okay.”

He understood that his life was entering a new period. Eileen had left while Carlyle was still filling out his grade reports. She’d said she was going to Southern California to begin a new life for herself there.

She’d gone with Richard Hoopes, one of Carlyle’s colleagues at the high school. Hoopes was a drama teacher and glass-blowing instructor who’d apparently turned his grades in on time, taken his things, and left town in a hurry with Eileen. Now, the long and painful summer nearly behind him, and his classes about to resume, Carlyle had finally turned his attention to this matter of finding a baby-sitter. His first efforts had not been successful. In his desperation to find someone—anyone—he’d taken Debbie on.

In the beginning, he was grateful to have this girl turn up in response to his call. He’d yielded up the house and children to her as if she were a relative. So he had no one to blame but himself, his own carelessness, he was convinced, when he came home early from school one day that first week and pulled into the drive next to a car that had a big pair of flannel dice hanging from the rearview mirror. To his astonishment, he saw his children in the front yard, their clothes filthy, playing with a dog big enough to bite off their hands. His son, Keith, had the hiccups and had been crying. Sarah, his daughter, began to cry when she saw him get out of the car. They were sitting on the grass, and the dog was licking their hands and faces. The dog growled at him and then moved off a little as Carlyle made for his children. He picked up Keith and then he picked up Sarah. One child under each arm, he made for his front door. Inside the house, the phonograph was turned up so high the front windows vibrated.

In the living room, three teenaged boys jumped to their feet from where they’d been sitting around the coffee table. Beer bottles stood on the table and cigarettes burned in the ashtray. Rod Stewart screamed from the stereo. On the sofa, Debbie, the fat girl, sat with another teenaged boy. She stared at Carlyle with dumb disbelief as he entered the living room. The fat girl’s blouse was unbuttoned. She had her legs drawn under her, and she was smoking a cigarette. The living room was filled with smoke and music.

The fat girl and her friend got off the sofa in a hurry.

“Mr. Carlyle, wait a minute,” Debbie said. “I can explain.”

“Don’t explain,” Carlyle said. “Get the hell out of here. All of you. Before I throw you out.” He tightened his grip on the children.

“You owe me for four days,” the fat girl said, as she tried to button her blouse. She still had the cigarette between her fingers. Ashes fell from the cigarette as she tried to button up. “Forget today. You don’t owe me for today. Mr. Carlyle, it’s not what it looks like. They dropped by to listen to this record.” “I understand, Debbie,” he said. He let the children down onto the carpet. But they stayed close to his legs and watched the people in the living room. Debbie looked at them and shook her head slowly, as if she’d never laid eyes on them before. “Goddamn it, get out!” Carlyle said. “Now. Get going. All of you.”

He went over and opened the front door. The boys acted as if they were in no real hurry. They picked up their beer and started slowly for the door. The Rod Stewart record was still playing. One of them said,

“That’s my record.”

“Get it,” Carlyle said. He took a step toward the boy and then stopped.

“Don’t touch me, okay? Just don’t touch me,” the boy said. He went over to the phonograph, picked up the arm, swung it back, and took his record off while the turntable was still spinning.

Carlyle’s hands were shaking. “If that car’s not out of the drive in one minute—one minute—I’m calling the police.” He felt sick and dizzy with his anger. He saw, really saw, spots dance in front of his eyes.

“Hey, listen, we’re on our way, all right? We’re going,” the boy said.

They filed out of the house. Outside, the fat girl stumbled a little. She weaved as she moved toward the car. Carlyle saw her stop and bring her hands up to her face. She stood like that in the drive for a minute.

Then one of the boys pushed her from behind and said her name. She dropped her hands and got into the backseat of the car. “Daddy will get you into some clean clothes,” Carlyle told his children, trying to keep his voice steady. “I’ll give you a bath, and put you into some clean clothes. Then we’ll go out for some pizza.. How does pizza sound to you?”

“Where’s Debbie?” Sarah asked him.

“She’s gone,” Carlyle said.

That evening, after he’d put the children to bed, he called Carol, the woman from school he’d been seeing for the past month. He told her what had happened with his sitter.

“My kids were out in the yard with this big dog,” he said. “The dog was as big as a wolf. The baby-sitter was in the house with a bunch of her hoodlum boyfriends. They had Rod Stewart going full blast, and they were tying one on while my kids were outside playing with this strange dog.” He brought his fingers to his temples and held them there while he talked.

“My God,” Carol said. “Poor sweetie, I’m so sorry.” Her voice sounded indistinct. He pictured her letting the receiver slide down to her chin, as she was in the habit of doing while talking on the phone. He’d seen her do it before. It was a habit of hers he found vaguely irritating. Did he want her to come over to his place? she asked. She would. She thought maybe she’d better do that. She’d call her sitter. Then she’d drive to his place. She wanted to. He shouldn’t be afraid to say when he needed affection, she said. Carol was one of the secretaries in the principal’s office at the high school where Carlyle taught art classes. She was divorced and had one child, a neurotic ten-year-old the father had named Dodge, after his automobile.

“No, that’s all right,” Carlyle said. “But thanks. Thanks, Carol. The kids are in bed, but I think I’d feel a little funny, you know, having company tonight.”

She didn’t offer again. “Sweetie, I’m sorry about what happened. But I understand your wanting to be alone tonight. I respect that. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”

He could hear her waiting for him to say something else. “That’s two baby-sitters in less than a week,” he said. “I’m going out of my tree with this.”

“Honey, don’t let it get you down,” she said. “Something will turn up. I’ll help you find somebody this weekend. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

“Thanks again for being there when I need you,” he said. “You’re one in a million, you know.”

“‘Night, Carlyle,” she said.

After he’d hung up, he wished he could have thought of something else to say to her instead of what he’d just said. He’d never talked that way before in his life. They weren’t having a love affair, he wouldn’t call it that, but he liked her. She knew it was a hard time for him, and she didn’t make demands.

After Eileen had left for California, Carlyle had spent every waking minute for the first month with his children. He supposed the shock of her going had caused this, but he didn’t want to let the children out of his sight. He’d certainly not been interested in seeing other women, and for a time he didn’t think he ever would be. He felt as if he were in mourning. His days and nights were passed in the company of his children. He cooked for them—he had no appetite himself—washed and ironed their clothes, drove them into the country, where they picked flowers and ate sandwiches wrapped up in waxed paper. He took them to the supermarket and let them pick out what they liked. And every few days they went to the park, or else to the library, or the zoo. They took old bread to the zoo so they could feed the ducks. At night, before tucking them in, Carlyle read to them—Aesop, Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm.

“When is Mama coming back?” one of them might ask him in the middle of a fairy tale.

“Soon,” he’d say. “One of these days. Now listen to this.” Then he’d read the tale to its conclusion, kiss them, and turn off the light.

And while they’d slept, he had wandered the rooms of his house with a glass in his hand, telling himself that, yes, sooner or later, Eileen would come back. In the next breath, he would say, “I never want to see your face again. I’ll never forgive you for this, you crazy bitch.” Then, a minute later, “Come back, sweetheart, please. I love you and need you. The kids need you, too.” Some nights that summer he fell asleep in front of the TV and woke up with the set still going and the screen filled with snow. This was the period when he didn’t think he would be seeing any women for a long time, if ever. At night, sitting in front of the TV with an unopened book or magazine next to him on the sofa, he often thought of Eileen. When he did, he might remember her sweet laugh, or else her hand rubbing his neck if he complained of a soreness there. It was at these times that he thought he could weep. He thought, You hear about stuff like this happening to other people.

Just before the incident with Debbie, when some of the shock and grief had worn off, he’d phoned an employment service to tell them something of his predicament and his requirements. Someone took down the information and said they would get back to him. Not many people wanted to do housework and baby-sit, they said, but they’d find somebody. A few days before he had to be at the high school for meetings and registration, he called again and was told there’d be somebody at his house first thing the next morning.

That person was a thirty-five-year-old woman with hairy arms and run-over shoes. She shook hands with him and listened to him talk without asking a single question about the children—not even their names. When he took her into the back of the house where the children were playing, she simply stared at them for a minute without saying anything. When she finally smiled, Carlyle noticed for the first time that she had a tooth missing. Sarah left her crayons and got up to come over and stand next to him. She took Carlyle’s hand and stared at the woman. Keith stared at her, too. Then he went back to his coloring.

Carlyle thanked the woman for her time and said he would be in touch.

That afternoon he took down a number from an index card tacked to the bulletin board at the supermarket. Someone was offering babysitting services. References furnished on request. Carlyle called the number and got Debbie, the fat girl.

Over the summer, Eileen had sent a few cards, letters, and photographs of herself to the children, and some pen-and-ink drawings of her own that she’d done since she’d gone away. She also sent Carlyle long, rambling letters in which she asked for his

understanding in this matter—this matter—but told him that she was happy. Happy. As if, Carlyle thought, happiness was all there was to life. She told him that if he really loved her, as he said he did, and as she really believed—she loved him, too, don’t forget—then he would understand and accept things as they were. She wrote, “That which is truly bonded can never become unbonded.” Carlyle didn’t know if she was talking about their own relationship or her way of life out in California. He hated the word bonded. What did it have to do with the two of them? Did she think they were a corporation? He thought Eileen must be losing her mind to talk like that. He read that part again and then crumpled the letter.

But a few hours later he retrieved the letter from the trash can where he’d thrown it, and put it with her other cards and letters in a box on the shelf in his closet. In one of the envelopes, there was a photograph of her in a big, floppy hat, wearing a bathing suit. And there was a pencil drawing on heavy paper of a woman on a riverbank in a filmy gown, her hands covering her eyes, her shoulders slumped. It was, Carlyle assumed, Eileen showing her heartbreak over the situation. In college, she had majored in art, and even though she’d agreed to marry him, she said she intended to do something with her talent.

Carlyle said he wouldn’t have it any other way. She owed it to herself, he said. She owed it to both of them. They had loved each other in those days. He knew they had. He couldn’t imagine ever loving anyone again the way he’d loved her. And he’d felt loved, too. Then, after eight years of being married to him, Eileen had pulled out. She was, she said in her letter, “going for it.”

After talking to Carol, he looked in on the children, who were asleep. Then he went into the kitchen and made himself a drink. He thought of calling Eileen to talk to her about the baby-sitting crisis, but decided against it. He had her phone number and her address out there, of course. But he’d only called once and, so far, had not written a letter. This was partly out of a feeling of bewilderment with the situation, partly out of anger and humiliation. Once, earlier in the summer, after a few drinks, he’d chanced humiliation and called. Richard Hoopes answered the phone. Richard had said, “Hey, Carlyle,” as if he were still Carlyle’s friend. And then, as if remembering something, he said, “Just a minute, all right?”

Eileen had come on the line and said, “Carlyle, how are you? How are the kids? Tell me about yourself.”

He told her the kids were fine. But before he could say anything else, she interrupted him to say, “I know they’re fine. What about you ?” Then she went on to tell him that her head was in the right place for the first time in a long time. Next she wanted to talk about his head and his karma. She’d looked into his karma. It was going to improve any time now, she said. Carlyle listened, hardly able to believe his ears. Then he said, “I have to go now, Eileen.” And he hung up. The phone rang a minute or so later, but he let it ring. When it stopped ringing, he took the phone off the hook and left it off until he was ready for bed.