A Regular Guy (10 page)

But their friendship did not maintain its first height. Noah tended towards sarcasm, which jarred Owens, whose customary answer to “How’re you doing?” was “Great.”

The trouble started when Owens commissioned Noah’s father to design a garden for Genesis. He wanted to give people nature to look at while they worked. Owens’ childhood attraction to the Kaskie family seemed finally redeemed.

When Norbert Kaskie completed the industrial garden, it filled the lot, as promised, but all the plants seemed too small. There probably was a garden Owens could have admired. Yet these plants didn’t look pretty to him. In fact, the flowers seemed too bright and orderly even for Noah. The public garden had not been built this way, all at once; Norbert Kaskie had improvised it over years and years. It depended, as did the yard of their rented house, on seeds, donations, whims and regular moving, digging up, all the things you’re not supposed to do. Norbert Kaskie had been an amateur botanist all his life and never once had a gardening job for pay. This time, he’d tried to be good.

It turned out that Noah’s sister was the artist, a photographer, and Owens also planned to commission a triptych from her for the conference room. Noah worked as go-between, because Michelle was currently traveling the East Coast, following the fall.

“Can she photograph things other than people?” Owens asked. “For example, if I were a photographer, I think I’d take pictures of the California landscape.”

It was the “can” that got Noah, the way Owens raised his eyebrows as if he suspected some flaw in Michelle’s education, about which she was, in fact, touchy.

“She could,” Noah said. “It’s just a matter of wanting to.”

“Some of the sequoias are three thousand years old, Noah. They’re the oldest living things on the planet.”

“So. They don’t need Michelle.”

“Of course they do, because who knows how long they’ll be around? Somebody’ll blast them down or there could be an earthquake; anything could happen. You know what they did to the biggest one? They chopped it down to make a dance floor. Oh, and I think with what was left, they carved out a bowling alley.”

“Now,
that
I’d like to see,” Noah said.

“Anyway, if I were her, I’d make California landscapes.”

Noah rolled off in a huff, thinking, So that’s what my sister’s talent is supposed to be for—a documentary record of trees.

Actually, Noah loved trees. As a child, he’d made a workbook, with labeled sketches of branches, glued-in samples of leaves, flowering seeds and bark tracings. Even then he found himself drawn to old, broken-down oaks, ancient cottonwoods, the close rather than the majestic. Noah wasn’t sentimental about big redwoods. He considered refusing the project without telling his sister.

“I’ve got a problem with Kaskie,” Owens told Olivia, in the car. “I don’t think I can keep his dad’s garden.”

“Why? What’s wrong with it?”

That night, they walked through it on the bare footpaths.

Olivia shrugged. “I kind of like it.”

“But I don’t think it’s a question of whether you like it or I like it. I just don’t think it’s great. And I can’t be having gardens that are kind of interesting but might be junk. I have a responsibility to the people who work here to give them something inspiring outside their windows.”

Olivia laughed. “This could inspire them.”

“Well, maybe somebody, but not everybody or even most people. Whereas great art, like Shakespeare or Ansel Adams, would—and I consider the best gardens to be art. I guess I’ll just have to tell him.”

“Does that make them better than Kafka or Schiele. Or the desert, for that matter?”

Owens had never read Kafka, and he didn’t know who the other one was, but he said, “Yes, it does. There’s a reason deserts are sparsely populated.” He snapped his fingers. “Sissinghurst, that’s the name.”

“Are you going to pay him anyway?”

“That’s a good question.” He sighed. “I suppose so.”

But as it turned out, Norbert Kaskie turned down the payment. Privately, he blamed himself. He knew he’d been unable to replicate the public garden. No more was ever said of it, and six months later the area was sodded and a volleyball net was erected.

But now Noah was receiving an extraordinary gift, out of the blue. He thought maybe it was the consolation prize for the million dollars he’d lost, though in fact the van had been ordered months earlier. Olivia believed it was her doing. She constantly nudged Owens’ generosity. She understood it was essential to his vision of her that she not want bounty for herself, so she felt most animated in her fight for others’ portions. Under her influence, Owens’ parents received two cruise trips and her cousin Huck got a suit for his birthday. And ever since Noah’s father refused payment for the garden, Olivia had been looking for some sort of compensation.

Noah was a member of Olivia’s flock. In this period of his life, Owens frequently mentioned Saint Francis and Sister Clare. By the time his daughter knew him well, it was John and Jackie. But do not be too hard on him. It is why movie stars marry movie stars. Great men look to other great men because, in most cases, they cannot model themselves, in the simplest and most common way, upon their parents.

Noah was at work when he received the call from Owens’ secretary.

Freckled, nice, green-eyed Kathleen
,

Who comes from a state where kitchens are clean
.

She had a fresh, clipped voice on the telephone, but he knew she was married. “Your van’s in,” she told him. “Just waiting for you to go get it.”

“Promise me one thing,” he remembered his grandmother saying,
holding his chin in her hard fingernails. “That you’ll never buy German.” She’d meant a Mercedes. “You’re Jewish and don’t you ever forget it.”

Noah had promised; it was easy. He was a seven-year-old Noah then, in a wheelchair, and he’d already had thirty-one fractures. Though his favorite toys for years had been cars, no one knew if he could ever drive.

And now Noah was getting a German custom-made van. It was Kempf, not Mercedes, but if she knew, she’d ask what Kempf was building during the war. He could have explained this, he supposed, but Owens was dumb about ethnicity. All he knew was that one of his ancestors was an Arab or a Jew, he didn’t know which. He could seem vaguely charmed if a guy he was thinking of hiring or a woman he wanted to date was Lebanese, but if the guy wasn’t that good or the woman wasn’t that pretty, it was Lebanese Schnebanese. And Kempf made the best. Noah didn’t want Everett Jennings. He’d used their chairs most of his life.

The car lot was in San Jose, and his mother drove him. When they saw the van, it was everything. “We never had a car this nice,” she whispered, though the salesman had left them alone. She ran her hands down the sides. She seemed greedy, pulling lights on, gingerly searching for the brake with her pump (it braked manually). His mother appreciated fine things. Noah had to ask her if he could be alone with it.

“Do you want me to go and come back?” she offered. “We could have a sandwich.”

When Noah was young, every time she bought him a new chair, they went just the two of them, without Michelle. And each chair, the first day, felt wonderful and strong, as if there’d be no more afternoons roaming Telegraph Avenue on a loaner while they waited for repairs. She wouldn’t take him back to school. She gave him the day to get used to it. They always went out for crab sandwiches. He no longer had his three old chairs, but he still thought of them.

The van was deep navy blue, sleek, male, automatic. At the press of a button, a ramp drew down from the driver’s floor, grip bars on both sides. Noah leveraged himself up, pushed the chair to the back. The
ramp would lift automatically, but Noah decided not to use more than he needed. Little eases were the first treats on the long slide down to the bed. Brake and gears, everything was manned on top. He’d have to teach himself here, on the lot. Noah had learned to drive on his parents’ old Chrysler, with metal extension bars, which was like driving while working string puppets. The last years, he’d just used buses.

Owens had ordered the van complete with every option, but Noah didn’t touch the phone. He’d heard that the bills were outrageous and didn’t know when the charges started; maybe when you picked it up. Noah had an underdeveloped sense of money; he thought a call from a car could cost ten dollars or a hundred. But good for an emergency, he thought.

He remembered the place where he and his mom had always gone for the sweet crab sandwiches. But he was too old for that. “I’ve got to get back to work,” he told her.

Sometimes he had to make himself be alone.

When Noah sat high up, he clapped,
I lucked out
. He felt full with gratitude. Or maybe I deserve it, he considered, but the idea couldn’t hold. Too many people deserved. He touched the leather seat, which smelled of something recently alive.

“She’s all yours,” the dealer said, tapping the roof.

The gas tank was full, and Noah started driving, slowly. Working the manual brakes and gas was like juggling; it required all his concentration. Noah was afraid he’d wreck the van before he even got back to the lab. He’d have to park it in the lot there. But he wanted to get used to it now, in the daylight. And there were certain places he’d never been alone. He drove all the way to an ice cream stand at the beach, where he’d once stopped with Olivia. They’d bought drumsticks and eaten them outside, peeling off the sticky paper before a white-barreled surf. He’d often wanted to return, but not enough to talk someone into driving. Whims were different when you could satisfy them without help. Yet as he sat dutifully eating, sand blew onto his drumstick, opening in his mouth like paper flowers, and all of a sudden he had to show someone. Olivia lived at Owens’ house, so he got back into the van and drove there.

As he wound past rich people’s land, it occurred to him that this was his first charity. He should have tried it a lot sooner. He’d always assumed that charity humbled you, as being carried weakened the body. The van was new and clean. He lurched over the road, controlling motion. It felt due him, even overdue, this power.

But elation cannot last. Getting in and out of the van meant work. He’d build up muscles, he decided, in his arms, his favorite parts. He was weak now from years in a chair with pneumatic wheels.

Owens’ place was like an untended cemetery. Gates creaked and banged, loose on old hinges. It had once been the weekend estate of a copper king, who’d planted the now huge copper beeches. He’d lived hard and died in San Francisco. No one had lived here year round before; it was built to be a party house. Architecture was a joke.

And whatever Owens was, he wasn’t a party. All his celebration tied to business and occurred in rented places. Once, he’d told Noah, he had nine Japanese businessmen for dinner; when they’d arrived, the couple who cooked for him had the places set, but one setting was without a chair. So the nine Japanese men sat around the table and Owens stood. Before the meal was over, one of the chairs broke and a businessman fell to the floor with a loud thud. The meeting had not gone well, Owens said. Now twelve new wooden chairs waited around the table.

Huge trees swayed like ferns, making the sounds you hear only in an abandoned place.

Sometimes gardeners worked the yard, but no one was around today. Owens’ talent for hiring was nowhere apparent in his household. He always seemed to find people who took advantage, an idea that inspired new outrage in Noah because today, for the first time, someone could think that of him.

The whole yard lay dug up. They were supposed to be putting in an orchard. Trees slanted on the driveway, their roots in burlap bags. Before the Genesis garden disaster, Noah had thought of this as a job for his father.

Owens intended to plant his own garden, with two of every kind of tree. He planned to walk out in the evening and pick his vegetables for supper. But Noah just knew it was going to be a long time, years, before Owens bit into his own apple, and when that finally happened, a hundred thousand dollars from now, the apples from the A & P would taste better.

He went in the front door—they didn’t lock—and wheeled through the vast, dim living room to the kitchen Owens had never fixed. A triangular piece of ceiling had rotted out. About a hundred cherry tomatoes, yellow and red and orange, spilled over the counter. Noah popped one; it tasted warm. “Olivia!” he shouted.

She was gone or asleep. If she was sleeping upstairs and couldn’t hear him, there was nothing he could do. The closest this house had to an elevator was an ancient dumbwaiter. Normally you could trace Olivia from her car, an old black Bug, but it was in the shop again. Olivia worked at the Alta convalescent hospital. He’d try there.

He went out the back door. Overgrown runners for squash scored the ground, the yellow flowers limp and browned. Bees accumulated free around the berry bushes. And in the dip where the garden fell to a carrot patch, among the huge lacy tops, a child lay curled in the dirt. A girl, with matted hair and torn clothes. She was pale and thin, with a wide face and freckles spanning her nose. Noah nudged her with his wheel.

She sat up, most of her weight in her butt, like a top settling. “Are you a midget?” she asked, rubbing her eyes. She bent over, hugging her calves, hair over her face, kissing her own knee through a hole in her pants.

“How old are you?”

“Ten.”

“You’re ten and you don’t know the difference between a midget and a man?”

“There’s no difference. A midget or a dwarf is a man.”

“So why ask if I’m a midget if I’m a man?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just what I thought of.” Her stomach growled. Noah looked over the garden. There really wasn’t much to eat. “Those
strawberries have snails,” she added, picking at a bump on her ankle where there was a scab. Once she’d lifted it off, Noah was surprised to see her put it in her mouth. “Do you live here?”

An envelope was safety-pinned to her sleeve,
Tom Owens
penciled on it. Noah pointed at it. “He lives here, but he’s not home now. What do you want him for?”