Boonville (15 page)

This wasn't the time to dredge up fond memories, John warned himself. Nostalgia can navigate the most jilted of hearts.

“I killed your fish,” Christina said, breaking the silence. “Instead of giving them away, I flushed them down the toilet.”

“Well,” John said, searching for something to say he wouldn't regret, “I love and miss you too.”

“Don't give me that shit,” Christina said. “For the record, it was you who stood still, I was moving. I brought home a bigger check. I paid for the health club, the dining room set, birth control, anything we wanted that was nice. If I left things up to you, we would have spent every weekend at the beach.”

“You're right,” John admitted. “I would have given us both melanomas.”

“Never serious when you should be,” Christina said. “I hope you're happy with your decision.”

“I hope you are too,” John said, realizing they had come to a point beyond apology or reconciliation; even if she were to ask him back, or suggest that she move to Boonville, or if he requested permission to return, it wouldn't work.

“Christina?” he said. “Do you remember that night we went to Bean Bean's and left with a bottle of champagne? We walked on the beach, acting like I was on shore leave and going off to fight in the war. We pretended we might never see each other again. You filled my glass and then poured the rest of the bottle on yourself, saying, ‘Drink up soldier.' We made love and you said, ‘I hope I'm pregnant, because you're the only man I'd want to father my child.'”

“I remember,” Christina answered, conceding nothing.

“For the first time in my life, I felt a part of me was squared away and I could begin fixing the rest.” John told her. “I couldn't imagine a future without you.”

John could hear Christina moving around the apartment, padding across the carpet and then the unmistakable sound of a refrigerator door opening, followed by the crack of a soda can. Diet Coke, no doubt. She would cut a wedge of lemon and pour it into a glass with no ice. He heard the slide of a drawer, then her fishing around the cupboard. She was walking again, settling back to wherever she had been sitting.

“Do you remember the next day?” John said.

“When you puked all over everything?” Christina asked. “I washed our comforter about a dozen times before I got out that smell.”

“No, I meant the morning,” John said, wondering how he had forgotten that part. “It was my first month at Leggiere and Philips, and I felt horrible. You said, ‘Come back to bed.' You held the sheets open for me. I crawled back in, and you smiled the most satisfied smile I've ever seen.”

“Then you threw up,” Christina said.

“No,” John said, upset she wouldn't lend herself to his sentimentality. “I threw up after I ate that shitty takeout from the Chinese place I hate but you always order from anyway, Rat Scabie Szechuan.”

“Poo Ping,” she corrected.

“Fuck it,” John said.

“That's the Thai restaurant,” Christina replied.

This was why it didn't work, John thought. We can't even
have a basic conversation without breaking into a hostile Abbott and Costello routine.

“What's your point?” Christina asked. “Or did you call to reminisce?”

“No point,” John said. “For some reason, I wanted you to remember that for me. Regardless of what happens, wherever we go, I will be grateful for having been at peace with myself in your arms. But apparently we don't share the same memory. That's our problem though, isn't it? We don't exactly complement each other.”

“I guess we don't,” Christina agreed. “I'm just glad I didn't get pregnant, because if I did, I have the feeling I'd be taking care of a baby by myself right now. Someday, maybe I'll be able to forgive you for being an asshole, but if we had a child, I don't think I ever could have. At least you did something right.”

John didn't know how to respond. He almost said, “Thank you.”

“Take care of yourself, John,” Christina said, abruptly, “I gotta go.”

“All right,” he replied, wondering where she had to go, suddenly aware that this was goodbye. “Take care of yourself too.”

“I already am,” Christina said.

“I love you,” John said, but the connection had been terminated.

He sat on the edge of Grandma's bed, holding the receiver, running everything through his mind, the conversation, his old apartment, the cabin, champagne kisses, 60-40 memories, Christina, Good Neighbor Michael, bad Chinese food, Miami Beach, Boonville. The possibility of children. He searched the room expecting a response from somewhere between the planks or above the light fixtures. He put the receiver back in its cradle and reached for Christina's picture. He laid it face down on the nightstand in exchange for the telephone, which he rocked in his hand, feeling its weight and significance. Then he fired it across the room, scattering squirrels like bowling pins.

“Fuck you!” he yelled.

There was no answer except for the echo of the telephone's broken ringer, which John imagined emanating from his cabin, drifting down off the hill through the weeds, past the fence, sifting through tree branches, over graveled roads, vibrating by busted bottles, beer cans, torn truck tires, road kill, and into the town of
Boonville like rings of pond water set in motion by the stone of a mischievous child.

J
ohn was trying to write a letter to Christina, but the first line kept wanting to become a haiku:

You'll probably end up

being a lesbian,

and I'll have another thing

to figure out.

The wastepaper basket overflowed. He stared at the page, two-thirds blank, waiting for the rest of the words to come. Something had been left unsaid during their telephone conversation three hours ago, but it wouldn't reveal itself. He realized there was no product to sell, but he wondered when his marketing experience would pay off with a series of tight sentences. Chewing on his pen, he was gaining new respect for Margaret Washington.

A knock interrupted him, not a violent rapping, but a normal request to see if anyone was home. John decided it couldn't be anybody he had met recently, they would have just kicked in the door and started swinging. He abandoned the letter and looked for a weapon to be on the safe side, settling for a squirrel sculpture with a long tail that he could brandish as a club. Holding it behind his back, he approached the front door.

“Who is it?” he said.

“It's Sarah,” the voice answered. “Is that you, John?”

“Maybe,” he said, not wanting to fall for the old “bait and switch.” It sounded like Sarah, but Daryl could be behind her
holding a hatchet to her throat and when he opened the door, hack!, hack!, hack!, both of them would get it in the neck.

He grabbed another squirrel off the coffee table.

“Are you alone?” John said.

“What's the big deal?” Sarah asked. “Are you O.K.?”

Element of surprise, John told himself, flinging open the door and leaping into the threshold with a squirrel in each fist.

Sarah jumped back. John could tell she didn't know whether he was going to assault her or start juggling. She was by herself, a mud-streaked Toyota pickup parked in the driveway next to the Datsun. It had to be her vehicle, Daryl undoubtedly drove something American and with a gun rack. John lowered the squirrels.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm a little edgy.”

“No shit,” Sarah said, before noticing his swollen face, split lip, and the hypnotic swirl of purple beneath his eye.

John knew his bruises were at a point where they appeared worse than they felt, although it was debatable, and he could see that Sarah recognized the signature in his contusions, the handwriting of a closed fist that spelled DARYL.

“Jesus,” Sarah gasped, “please tell me you fell in the bathtub.”

“I thought news traveled fast in this town,” John said.

“It does, but they're not exactly into current affairs where I live, or town gossip, or most types of communication for that matter,” Sarah said, stepping forward and putting a hand to John's face. “God, I'm sorry. Does it hurt?”

“Only when I breathe,” he said.

It wasn't the pain that bothered him now so much as the I-want-to-go-to-sleep-for-the-rest-of-my-life feeling that had accompanied him ever since the scuffle, intensifying with Blindman's visit, and nearing a state of narcosis after his goodbye to Christina. He had thought writing a letter would revive him, but that had backfired. So, seeing how there were no tall buildings to jump off, he was resigned to jeopardizing what little life-force he still possessed by conversing with Sarah. Since his coming to Boonville, death didn't scare him half as much as living a long life.

“Apparently your ex got the worst of it,” John said, and told Sarah about the aid he had received from Pensive and her can of Mace, how Deputy Cal, Billy Chuck, and Hap had been no help at all. Then, as if talking in his sleep, he related his experience with
Blindman, the nightmares, and his phone call to Christina.

“It hasn't been a good week,” he confessed, wondering what it was about Sarah that made him spill his guts.

In the sky behind her, John saw a large bird circling without flapping its wings, round and round, descending with certainty toward its prey. The wind pushed it off course for a moment, but it spiraled back, a holding pattern.

“Would you like to come in?” John said, realizing they were on the porch. “I could make some tea. You could fill me in on our night together. I blacked out. Maybe I did something worth getting my ass kicked?”

“You were a gentleman,” Sarah replied, still examining his busted face as if she had hit him herself. “Tea would be nice.”

Inside, John asked Sarah to make herself at home while he went into the kitchen to put a kettle on the range. He selected an herbal, non-caffeinated Zinger, thinking it might be what hippie girls drank when they weren't bottoming quarts of whiskey. In the cupboard he found some tea biscuits, a purchase made in the heat of his shopping excursion. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Sarah take off her jacket, suppressing her amazement at all the squirrel sculptures. She adjusted the flue on the wood-burning stove to generate more heat, took notice of the busted telephone and the matching fracture in the wall, saw the kindling box full of more squirrels, read the first sentence of his letter, and sat down on the couch.

“Is it the fear of every man that their lover will leave them for another woman?” she called out to John.

“I don't know,” John answered from the kitchen, pouring steaming water into two cups. “That was supposed to be a love letter.”

“I think if I found out Daryl was gay, I'd be relieved,” she said, examining one of the squirrels John had selected to defend himself, passing her fingers from teeth to tail, searching for meaning in its texture, feeling its heft, then lifting its end to determine the sex; smooth as a Ken doll, nutless. “He'd have an excuse for his anger, denying his sexuality, trying to be somebody he wasn't. As it stands, he's just an asshole.”

John handed her a mug and put the plate of biscuits on the table in front of them, proud of his domesticity. He sat down beside her. Not too close. Sarah set the sculpture aside and blew
on her tea, looking like the-girl-next-door, no makeup, hair tousled, wholesome as a borrowed cup of milk.

“You know, you look like one of them,” she said, nodding toward Grandma's handiwork. “You shouldn't burn any, you might be incinerating your own spirit.”

John was disturbed that Sarah could see his countenance in the carvings. He had tried to put the idea of intentional likeness out of his mind, but again was forced to wonder if he had been the source of Grandma's inspiration. Maybe that day on her lap had been indelibly etched in her memory too? His flight from her scent the final repudiation? But she must have known he had never deserted her in his heart.

“I'm not sure what Grandma had in mind,” John said. “But it's unnerving to have so many of them looking at you with that expression.”

“I'm sure that's what she thought,” Sarah said, withdrawing her mouth from the lip of the mug. “I always thought it was weird that ‘Chip 'n' Dale' out front faced the house and not the valley. Then I snuck up here once and stood in front of them for the full effect. It's as if the whole world is scorning you. I wonder why your grandma did that to herself?”

“You want milk or sugar for that?” John said, taking a drink of his tea, not wanting to talk about the squirrels or to be linked with Grandma's ostracism.

“No, I'm O.K.,” Sarah answered. “I wish I had met your grandmother. I saw her in town, sometimes with Margaret Washington and Step, but I never talked to her.”

“Step?” John asked.

“That's what they call Margaret Washington's boyfriend because he's always walking two steps behind her with his head down,” Sarah said. “It might have to do with Stepin Fetchit, too, but her boyfriend's white. I don't know. Everybody has a nickname around here, Digger, Swoop, Squirrel Lady. The intimacy of a small town. I think I'm locally known as Megabitch.”

She tried her tea again, letting that one sink in.

John remembered Christina saying that for men, women fell into three categories: bitch, virgin, or mother. For women, men also came in three flavors: assholes, guys you'd screw, and your boyfriend. “What about father?” he had asked. “Whether women want to admit it or not,” Christina had replied, “Father fits into
one of the first two categories.” She never said what the categories were for women classifying women or men classifying men. But now John knew where Boonville had lumped Sarah.

“I always meant to talk to your grandmother,” Sarah said. “I sometimes work with wood too. I'm applying for a grant to sculpt an exact replica of every citizen of Boonville and then stick them on crosses to line the downtown on both sides of 128.”

“That's creepy,” John said, biting a stale biscuit. “I'm not sure everyone would want to see themselves and their neighbors up on the cross.”

“A lot of people didn't want to see Christ up there either,” Sarah answered. “It's not the point of art to show people what they want to see. It's important to make them examine themselves and reflect what the artist sees. I'd like to do their pets too if I got enough money. I doubt I'll get anything with Bush in the White House. See how they treated Mapplethorpe?”

John wondered what Grandma and Sarah would have talked about if they had been given the chance. Art? Emily Dickinson? Divorce? The future of the Women's Movement? Her grandson in Miami who was just about Sarah's age?

Grandma had never met Christina, although they had spoken on the telephone.

“A woman has got to see something beyond her house, husband, and children,” Grandma had told her more than once before Christina could hand over the receiver to John. “And a boutique's not good enough.” Grandma would have liked Sarah though, might have even noticed her in the market or on the street, commenting to herself that there was still hope if that was the next generation.

“How many have you finished?” John inquired, trying to estimate the hours of work involved in such an undertaking, the fevered nights of sawing and sanding, shaving and chiseling, living with something trapped inside you until it finally manifested itself outside your mind: an entire town crucified. Nails pounded through their pets' paws too. Not only would Sarah's project offend the religious right, the animal activists would shit bricks. They'd flip for the honor of crucifying Sarah, not in effigy either.

“Just one, of myself,” Sarah said. “Before I decided to go life-size, I made 715 three-foot crosses; then it occurred to me the project was about scale. I photographed those as a model to submit
with my proposal, so it wasn't a total waste. But the funny thing is I don't live in Boonville. Technically, I'm a resident of Elk. But if I used Elk, I'd lose scope, metaphor, and audience. Everybody on 128 will be forced to look if I use Boonville. Tourists will think they're approaching Dracula's castle. And I'm sure there would be an excess of reds left in the tasting rooms, especially if I used the tentative title for the exhibit, ‘The Blood of Christ in Wine Country.'”

“You should do it whether you get the funding or not,” John told her.

“Yeah,” Sarah agreed, her attention drifting to a corner of the cabin containing the picture of Grandma on the front steps of the Arizona homestead.

She sipped her tea and said nothing for a while, reached for a biscuit, and then thought better of it. Her enthusiasm had disappeared faster than fuel in a jet engine. She looked at John with the same sullen introspection he had seen at the Lodge when she had stalled in her speech on “sneaking away from the inevitable.”

“Is there anything I can do?” John said, laying his teacup aside.

“No,” she answered. “I just had another fight with my mom, that's all. I have to get out of here before I go totally berserk. I can do my projects somewhere else, L.A., New York, San Francisco, somewhere people can't enter my life unless I invite them.”

Sarah's statement reminded John of his reasons for leaving Florida. But he had learned, the first person you meet at the airport is yourself and the first thing you do is claim your baggage. Nobody traveled light.

Sarah elaborated on her problems, filling in specifics for the generalizations she had alluded to at the Lodge. Real specifics: abuse, neglect, addiction. Who, what, where, when, how. Observations on her childhood, relationships, orgasms, periods, parents, constipation, the afterlife. John listened, thinking how true it was what people said about Californians sharing their private lives like other people discussed the weather. When Sarah got going, it was difficult to do anything but say “Uh-huh.” She locked in on you with her eyes, then fired her ballistic confessional, only pausing to rhetorically ask “You know?” or “Ever feel that way?”

John learned they had a lot in common. Not the specifics, apart from not having siblings, but a compatibility of chaos in their
lives because they had both been raised in the “Me Decade,” which had been followed by the “Me Again Decade.” During those twenty years nobody had wanted to do much parenting. The television transformed itself from entertainment to baby-sitter and educational tool, fostering an inability to express even the simplest idea without referring to a sitcom or ad campaign. Then there was the day-in day-out dilemma of “paper or plastic?” Do I weaken the world through destruction or debris? No plans to create a third option. Landfill. Despair. Tucked into bed with the feeling that everything had been done before, better. The inescapable attitude that it was coming to an end anyway. Searching for love in an age of nuclear proliferation.

“The thing for me was a day up in Oregon,” Sarah confessed. “It's not as if my mom didn't come back, she couldn't have been gone any longer than five minutes before she turned around in the car and came back. But she did leave me.”

Sarah told John that when she was thirteen, she and her mother had headed to Eugene, Oregon, for a job interview. Her mother had recently split with her boyfriend who had been taking daily doses of LSD for the past year, and she was thinking of shucking the commune for a career in civil engineering. Mom had a degree, and oddly enough, an interest in traffic flow theory. A meeting had been scheduled on the basis of her resume. Sarah had been delighted at the prospect of leaving the Waterfall.