All Over Creation (64 page)

I knew that Cass was thinking I might go after my son with a horsewhip or something. “Don't worry,” I told her. Not that I wouldn't have liked to.

When she left, I poured some of Geek's rum into a large glass and added some Coke, then went upstairs. I could hear Phoenix in the attic, but I wasn't going up there. Poo and Ocean were both asleep, but Ocean stirred when I pulled up her covers.

“Mommy?” she said. Her voice was fuzzy. I sat down next to her and rubbed her hot back. How could I feel so tender toward one child and so hard toward another? I watched the sleep clear from her face, and then the awful moment when she remembered and her face crumpled and she started to cry. Poor little thing. She couldn't understand how all these people she loved so much could just vanish, one after another, like bubbles bursting. “Where do they go?” she sobbed.

I wished I could give her some simple comfort, offer her God's heaven or some other divine and beneficent plan to make sense of all these earthly misfirings, but I couldn't. I did my best.

“They go back to the beginning, Puddle.”

“Beginning of what?”

“Of everything. Of life. Where things start.”

“What things?”

“Well, people, for one. And seeds. And potatoes. That's what Tutu Lloyd told me just before he died.”

She looked up at me with those clear blue Fuller eyes. Tears clung to her lashes. Her gaze flickered past me to the ceiling and the stars. I remembered the light in my father's ruined old face when he told me his dream, and I lay down next to Ocean so she wouldn't see that I was crying, too. I hugged her for a while until my voice started working again, and then I whispered in her ear.

“Grandpa told me that the beginning was very beautiful, and everything he loved was there. Can you imagine a place like that?”

“No,” she said, still sniffling.

“Sure you can. Let's try, okay? Close your eyes. Tell me something you love.”

She shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and promptly said, “Mommy,” which was exactly the right answer, so I gave her a big kiss on the forehead to reward her for her vast intelligence.

“And Phoenix and Poo,” she said. “And Grandma and Grandpa. And Geek and Chicken Little and all the Seeds. The flowers and potatoes and the big sky . . .”

“What about things in Hawaii?” I asked her. “The mangoes and frangipani . . .”

“And yummy pineapples . . .”

“And the ocean and the black sand beaches . . .”

We took turns listing until she fell asleep. Then I finished my drink and watched her for a bit longer, feeling thankful that I had a child who still trusted me enough to be bamboozled with a story. Poo was sleeping soundly. His cheeks were smudged with dirt and sticky glaze from the ham. I licked my thumb and tried to rub some of it off, then stopped when he began to grunt. I let him be. Ocean. Poo. Two out of three. I thought of Phoenix, lying awake in the darkened attic, listening, and I felt my face flush with anger.

I went back down to the kitchen and poured more rum, then stared out the window. The carcass of the Spudnik was still smoldering in the dark, but I could make out only the faintest outline. I thought about calling Elliot. He couldn't be responsible for this. I turned away. My eyes were still burning from the smoke, and sleep was out of the question. I got the broom and started sweeping the house, not caring how much noise I made. Ocean and Poo would sleep through it. The floor was streaked with mud and cinders, so I started in with the mop. I mopped and drank and smoked one cigarette after the other until the place was spotless and the rum and cigarettes were gone. I ate some leftover potato salad, then dug into the ashtray and smoked the last few butts. I still wasn't ready for bed. There was a twenty-four-hour gas station with a convenience store up at the entrance to the freeway. I lifted my car keys off the hook in the kitchen. My footsteps crunched in the gravel. When the Pontiac engine roared to life, I looked up at the house. I kept my eye on the rearview mirror as I bounced down the driveway, waiting for the light to go on in the attic window, but it never did.

To get to the gas station I had to drive by the motel. The low cinder-block building hunkered down in the shadows. The parking lot was full, and the neon sign said NO VACANCY, which surprised me, until I remembered all the funeral guests. I gunned the engine. I'd come out to buy cigarettes, not to go visiting. The convenience store shone brightly on the hill, looking over the dark town. I made the U-turn too fast and left skid marks on the pavement.

Number 6 was unlocked. The room was dark, but that didn't stop me. I knew the layout of the Falls Motel quite well by now, knew how many steps from door to bed, from bed to bathroom. I crossed the room and sat down hard on the edge of the mattress. I started shedding my clothing. I pried off a boot.

“Yummy?”

The boot went flying into the television set.

Elliot sat up. He sounded alarmed now. “Is that you?”

“Sure. You expecting someone else?” The other boot took off after the first one.

“That's not what I meant.”

I pulled off my jeans, crawled across the bed, and straddled him. “I never know what you mean, Elliot. Let's fuck.”

“Yummy, wait.” He peered at me. “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” I pushed him down against the pillow. I didn't want him in my face. “Listen, I don't have a whole lot of time. I gotta get back before the kids wake up. They'll kill me if they find out I'm here.”

“What are you talking about?” He sounded confused. Poor man. I ran my hand down his front, kneading his balls, then leaned over and nuzzled his ear.

“My kids?” I said. “You know I have kids, right? The ones that hate you? At least the two big ones do. The baby doesn't know how yet, but maybe he'll learn.”

“Stop that, will you?” He took me by the wrist, pried my hand away from his crotch. “I'm sorry to hear it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why am I sorry?”

“No. I can imagine why you'd be sorry. I mean why should I stop? You want to fuck me, right? C'mon, let's go.” I peeled off my shirt.

“Yummy, I want to talk to you.”

All the hard, twangy, boozy energy was coming to a head now, and I twisted my hand from his grip and pushed him back down. Then I started shoving him, sort of bouncing him into the springy mattress. “Well, that's just tough, Elliot. Because I don't want to listen.” I could hear my voice getting loud, and before I knew it, I was punching and slapping him, too. “I don't want to listen, because nothing you say is true, and you're a lying piece of shit and I hate you!”

He held up his hands to shield his face. He was bigger and stronger, and he could have stopped me, but he didn't. He let me go on and on, pummeling and pounding him with the pent-up force of twenty-five years, and when I was finally done, I felt strangely calm. I gave him one last shove and let my hands drop. I was still very drunk, but the fervor was gone. I looked at my watch. It was time to go home. I slid toward the edge of the bed and felt around for my jeans. They were somewhere on the floor, with my boots.

“Yummy? Can we talk now?”

I got down on my hands and knees to look for my pants. “Not a good time for talking, Elliot.” I located the jeans and pulled them over my feet. The legs got all tangled up, so I rolled onto my back and tried to kick them straight. “Bad time for talking.”

He turned on the bedside light. I was lying on the floor with my pants half on and my legs in the air.

“Turn off that fucking light!” I yelled.

But he left the light on and came to sit beside me on the floor. He gathered me into his arms. “Poor Yumi,” he murmured into the top of my head. “Yumi. You. Me . . .”

He was rocking me back and forth, and I started to relax in spite of myself, to soften into the familiar warmth of his chest. I was worn out from all that punching.

“Are you too drunk to hear me?”

I nodded.

“Try,” he whispered. “We need to talk. About us . . .”

I opened my eyes, but the idea failed to register.

“About the future,” he said, looking down at me. “Our future. Together.”

His face was too close, and his eyes started to drift, moving apart so that at first there were four eyes, then merging again until there was only one. I shook my head to clear it. I hated being this drunk. He was still talking. I stared into the one eye in the middle of his forehead and concentrated on not getting sick. The potato salad had been a mistake. One mistake. Of many.

“I've been doing a lot of thinking,” he was saying. “About what happened back then. What we did. We took a life, Yumi. From the universe. And the way I figure it, we owe one back. You and me. Life is sacred. I want to make amends.”

“Huh?” I struggled to sit up.

“I thought we could get married first. . . .”

The meaning of his words began to penetrate the rum fog in my brain. “What?”

“Then I want us to have a child.”

I pulled away and stared at him. At a distance his eyes held still. “Oh, my God. You're serious!”

“Perfectly.” He stood up and went to his bedside table. When he returned, he took my hand and placed something in the center of my palm. I looked down. It was a ring. He was on his knees now, in front of me.

“Yumi. My life has been . . . well, I won't say it hasn't been fun, but being with you after all these years, and seeing you with your kids, I had this feeling—” He stopped. “I don't know how to put it. . . .”

I held my breath.

“Like I may have missed something.”

That was it. Granted I was very drunk, but this struck me as hilariously funny and I started to laugh. I doubled over, clutching my stomach, and gasped for breath. “I think I'm going to be sick,” I said, and toppled onto my side like a roly-poly fetus. Finally, when the laughter subsided, I wiped my eyes.

“You're a fucking piece of work,” I said. “You know that, Elliot?”

“Yeah?” he said. His face lit up as he cocked his head hopefully.

But the laughter had sobered me up. I pulled my jeans on the rest of the way, then buttoned them. I found my boot and stuck my foot in it.

“So,” he said. “What do you think?”

The truly bizarre thing was that I could actually picture it. Through my alcoholic haze I could see the two of us, what? Returning to Pahoa? Moving to San Francisco? We could buy an old Victorian and paint it pretty pastel colors. Pastels were big out there, layers of peeling pinks and tawdry blues.

Maybe he felt my hesitation. Recalling it afterward, I think he probably did. I hope he did. I hope he believed, for one wild moment, that I would agree, that our two hearts would align with a click and we would live happily ever after. It was a moment of delicate equilibrium. His hopes had finally caught up with the ones I'd discarded some twenty-five years earlier.

I looked into his face, searching for a trace—but it was all gone. He was just an aging businessman, out of a job, and for the first time in my life I felt sorry for Elliot Rhodes. I didn't care if he had used me or lied to me. I didn't want to know. I rocked forward and stood, straightening my knees and tugging on my jeans. He looked up at me, still grinning, still believing.

“Well?”

“Forget it, Elliot. Not in a million years.” I looked down at the top of his head and briefly rested my fingertips there. “You had your chance,” I said, giving his brainpan a hard little tap. “You blew it.”

His grin, the last remnant of his confidence, lingered on his face. I walked to the door and was just about to sweep through it, when a vertiginous upswell of remembering stopped me dead. It's terrifying how that happens, how you can completely blank out on something so big and awful, and when you recall it, you feel like the solid earth has vanished from under your feet. There was only one thing he could tell me that I truly did want to know. I turned back and took a deep breath.

“Elliot, you didn't by any chance hire someone to spy on the Seeds and plant a bomb in their Winnebago and blow it up and kill Charmey, did you?”

“What?”
He looked at me, aghast.

“Because that's what happened. She's dead.”

For the first time ever, Elliot was struck dumb. That was enough for me, at least for the moment.

“No,” I said. “I knew you were a creep, but I didn't think you'd do something like that.”

The phone rang once.

“Cass?” His voice was thin and distant in the dark.

“Who is this?” Cass struggled to sit up. “Phoenix?” She held the receiver and turned her back to Will, whispering so as not to wake him. It was cold. She shivered and brought the covers up. She listened, then asked, “Where's Yummy?” And then, “I'll be right there.”