Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 02 - Spring Moon (12 page)

It was such a wild suggestion, I accepted. I called Karin and gave her the second installment on my day. I asked her to tell Jon in case he called.

“In case he calls? He has me on robo redial. It was every twenty minutes, now it’s down to every two,” she said. “I think he might be losing his mind. His voice has gotten so low it’s hard to figure out what he’s saying. You left him a message that was cut off and now you don’t answer. He thinks you’ve been abducted, or you’re with Stroud, if that’s who he means by
the guy guy
. No way in hell is he going to believe you’re staying with Bob and Sherry of Altadena, whoever they are. I’m not sure I believe it. Are they weird? They live next to a cemetery. Who does that?”

“They have quiet neighbors,” I said. “Except on Halloween.”

“Are you being held hostage? What’s my son’s nickname?”

“The Little Dick. He knows what you mean, by the way. I’m not the first person this has happened to. They open the cemetery at 7:00 so people can stop in on their way to work. God knows why. I’ll be at your house before you leave for the studio.”           

“I’m going to have Jon call you before his hair turns white.”

“Well, don’t even joke about your hostage scenario, or he’ll have the SWAT team and K-9 units blowing through their front door.”

Bob and Sherry were two of the most comfortable people on the planet. Sherry already had Meggie at the kitchen table with colored markers. Gus was licking her toes. He might need extra vaccinations. Bob was poking at steaks, holding Chance well out of harm’s way. Chance studied Bob’s face while Bob schooled him on the fine points of broiling dead bovine.

I had a fantasy that Bob and Sherry were my real parents, that I’d been switched at birth. A long shot since they were black, but whatever. Genetics can be tricky. The phone rang. Sherry sang into it.

“Hold on, Jon, she’s right here. You have beautiful children.”

I took the phone out of earshot. Sherry went back to making homemade French fries. She’d asked Meggie her preferences. I was sure ketchup was on the menu.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi. How you doing?”

“I’m fine. It’s been kind of hectic. My phone battery died, that’s why the message was cut off.”

“Karin told me.”

“It cost me eighty dollars to find a potty for Meggie. I didn’t want her to go in the bushes. There were used condoms. She’s just a baby.”

“Karin told me.”

“How are you? Did you talk to Chana again?”           

“I don’t want to talk about me, or Chana.”

“The kids are fine. Meggie is drawing. The dog is licking her toes. Poor dog. Chance is learning how to BBQ. You know how he always smiles when he goes to sleep? Now he smiles when he wakes up too. I think he might be an optimist. Well, an optimistic stoic, or stoic optimist, I can’t remember how it goes.”

“Optimistic stoic,” he said.

“You want to talk to Meggie?”

“No. Don’t disturb her.”

“I talked to the guy guy today. His name is Alan Watts.”

“I don’t want to hear this right now,” he said. “I just want to hear that you’re okay.”

“I’m okay. He never loved me. It was always her. Like you and Celeste. He offered to loan me money though.”

“No.   No.   No.  Do not even think about saying another word about this right now, Hannah. Not now.”

“I understand,” I said. “I’m not enough for a whole marriage. I get it. But I’m not giving up my children. I’m not, Jon. I’m not Celeste. I know how stubborn you can be. You’re like a mule. I don’t care how you think this is going to play out. I can support them.”

Bob came through the screen door butt first, Chance in one arm, a platter of steaks in the other.

“I think these are perfect,” said Bob. “Chance was a big help. Boy can really stare down a steak.”

“I need to go, dinner’s ready,” I said to Jon. “Meggie’s hands are scary. I had to kiss her hurt finger today. I probably picked up some epidemic disease. We saw a whole family of children who died in the cemetery today. Well, you know what I mean. They didn’t die there today. All in one year, a long time ago. Their family stone was an angel with a lamb. Meggie tried to feed the lamb grass. It broke my heart, Jon. All those babies dying.”

“Nothing is going to happen, Hannah. Nothing has happened. We’re all fine. Our babies are fine. Call me after you get them down.”

Sherry had set the dining room table in honor of their guests. She lit candles and turned down the lights. The room was muffled red and green wall covering in an old Craftsman home with cleaned and oiled wainscoting. The quarter-sawn oak had darkened into an organic brush painting of whorls. The candlelight animated the smooth luminous gold burled into the red. It looked like water rushing around rocks. Sometimes I saw the red as the water, sometimes the gold swirled. I was tired. The cemetery crickets rubbed their skitchity legs in the summer heat.

Bob piled up phone books for Meggie to sit on. She shifted her hips back and forth and hummed while she dragged fat fries through ketchup. Sherry pulled a wing chair up to the table so I could lay Chance down. I smiled at him, but he wasn’t old enough to smile back.

I told them about my grandmother. About my father, who crashed into the side of a snowy mountain and died, probably froze to death, before anyone could reach him. I don’t know why, probably because I was exhausted and they were like being in the presence of softness, I told them that he’d had an affair before he crashed. That he was trying to get home to my mother because she didn’t trust him yet. About her years of drinking and absence from the details of my daily life. That I planned to show up for every school play, for every game, for every everything.

I told them that Jon’s mother had been in a car accident with her parents when she was a little girl. His mother was trapped in the car with her mother, who didn’t live long enough to be rescued either. Her grandparents had raised her. His mother never talked about the accident. She never talked about anything much. She was always nice, always cautious. Kept things in order.

I told them about lighting the straw under Margaret’s feet. That Jon’s mother used to chase her boys around the block with a straw broom and scream at them because she was so afraid that something would happen to them. About Jon hiring Celeste. About bits slapping Joyce.

They ate dinner and nodded and said, “Mmm, yeah, uh huh,” like they had lived the same life. Sherry thought I should have knocked that bits Joyce upside the head and left. Taken my chances with the police. Bob said paying the money was the right thing to do, not make matters worse. They said my babies were beautiful. They said Jon sounded nice. She said Bob had been like Jon, stupid nice.

“Some men get trained that way,” said Sherry. “Bob grew up taking care of his mama, who always had some problem, most of it made up. She pretended to need a wheelchair for a whole year. She threw in some truth every so often to keep him off balance. He spent an hour on the phone with her every night after work. Drove us all crazy. It was years of knocks upside the head before he stopped going along with it. She learned to tango.”

They smiled at each other. It was not a new conversation.

“Girls should get to know the mama before they walk down the aisle,” she said. “Being in the car like that could make someone crazy.”

“His mom isn’t crazy, except when she cleans. We hardly knew each other when we got married. Anyway, Jon doesn’t take well to head knocking.”

“You wouldn’t want a man who did,” said Sherry. “Bob’s perfect now. Or as perfect as can be expected. He’s a terrible leader on the dance floor. We’ll never tango, but he can swing.”

“I don’t know if we’ll get to that point,” I said.

“Hope you do,” said Sherry. “Do you like rhubarb pie?”

“Boyfriend pie,” I said. “Sweet with a dangerous tang.”

“You bake it for boyfriends?”

“No. A perfect boyfriend is sweet with a dangerous tang.”

“I hear that,” she said.

I fed Chance while Sherry cleared the table. Meggie got on the floor next to Gus. He licked ketchup off her face while she fell asleep.

They told me their story over warm pie and vanilla bean ice cream. They’d met at Berkeley in the 60s. Sherry summed it up as having matching Afros and granny glasses, living in a conventional town where the aroma of dog shit, pot, and patchouli oil wafted through the window of their rundown apartment. They’d marched for free speech, People’s Park, and peace.

They’d lived in their beautiful wood house for thirty-five years, had raised three kids and were hoping for grandchildren. Bob had worked at City Hall as a general assistant to the City Council. He’d seen it all. Calm days, corrupt police days, riots and regeneration. Sherry had managed an insurance brokerage in Pasadena. Their older daughter lived in San Francisco and had a bakery. Their middle child seemed a bit lost; he was a photographer who hadn’t found a comfortable place yet. Their younger daughter practiced corporate law downtown, and was engaged to a yoga instructor. They weren’t sure how that was going to work out.

I hadn’t packed jammies, so while Sherry kept an eye on the kids and Bob steadied the ladder, I climbed back over the wall and got more clothes and a toothbrush. I told Bob that it reminded me of all the time I’d spent teetering around on ladders, rigging up concepts of reality for movies. I’d once worked downtown by his old office.

“The homeless people used to pee and bathe in the fountains,” I said. “They brushed their teeth in the same fountains. I think I’d stop brushing my teeth before I did that.”

“They need their teeth in case they get a chance to eat,” he said.

“I know. It made me sad every day. Everyone joked that I gave away half my salary.”

“Life is sad all over the world,” he said. “I came to the conclusion that we can’t fix it all. Some make it, some don’t. It’s a mystery why.”

I took Chance in for our first shower together. I held his head between my breasts and let the warm water rain gently on his back. By the time I’d brushed my teeth and put him down, Meggie was waking up. I gave her a quick bath. She usually screamed when she was that tired, but she was very docile. I was shocked by the amount of dirt in the bottom of the tub. She was in a coma before she hit the pillow next to Chance.

I tiptoed out and said good night to Bob and Sherry. They were watching television in matching recliners with the sound turned down and lights low. A warm night breeze came through the windows. Grandma and company slept peacefully over the wall. I fought off the urge to curl up in Sherry’s lap. They said good night, have sweet dreams. I crawled into bed with Chance and Meggie and called Jon.

“Are the babies down?” he asked.

“They’re sound asleep. Their dog Gus is sleeping next to Meggie. I hope his collar protects his neck.”

“How are you, H?”

“I need to go to sleep. I’m sorry. I’m really tired.”

“It’s okay. Call me tomorrow. I love you. We’ll work this out. Get some rest.”

I think that’s what he said. I fell asleep to his voice. I woke up two hours later to the low battery warning flashing. I whispered into the phone.

“Are you still there?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I fell asleep.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to hang up now. The battery is dead.”

“Okay. Talk to you in a while.”

I hung up the phone and set the alarm for 6:30, and went back to sleep.

The alarm beeped softly. I got dressed and stole out to the kitchen. Bob was drinking coffee and reading the paper. Sherry was in a light wrap and just starting bacon. The distinctive sound of KPFK’s morning radio show was quiet in the background. I used to listen to it on the way to work when I had an early call.

“You ready?” asked Bob.

I climbed back over the wall. It had been a night with a little fall warning in it. The car was slippery with dew. Each blade of grass was a shining silver sliver in the sun. My feet were wet and slippery, the leather soles of my sandals left dark green footprints.

I drove off the grass and checked for headstone damage. As I suspected, there were tire tracks over a few names. I rubbed them off with the bottom of my tee shirt, then cleaned grass out of the carved names and buffed them dry.             

I was waiting at the gate when the woman showed up to release me. People with take-out coffee were waiting to get in. I’d never understood it. I can’t whip-up emotion staring at a slab of granite. 

I told the guard that I’d slept in the car. She eyed the car seats and didn’t seem inclined to let me go. I wrote down all my information. She insisted on seeing my driver’s license. I considered telling her she was being a bit, but I was down to a dollar in change.

I pulled through the big gates and realized I didn’t know where Sherry and Bob lived. I didn’t know what the front of their house looked like. I didn’t know their last name or phone number. Hell, even if I did, I didn’t have my phone. My babies were missing. I held my breath while the right and left sides of my brain locked in rare agreement, panic.

I heard my father’s voice, “Let’s practice CRM, Hannie.” He was big on practicing cockpit resource management. It had filtered down from NASA through the airlines to single engine Cessna pilots. I doubt he had realized he had an in-flight problem. My mother claimed he’d been distracted thinking about his love affair and life management problems when he hit the mountain.

He taught me to take a deep breath, look out the window and ask myself, “Where am I?” “In the clouds” was my favorite response. He always smiled; he didn’t live long enough for us to get tired of that one. I took a breath and looked out the car window. I was earthbound, driving a Chevy Cruze into a retina-slicing sunrise. There was a mountain in front of me, but it wasn’t in my immediate future. I knew how to change radio frequencies and put out a distress call, but saying, “Mayday, Mayday” in a calm voice wouldn’t help. The best I could do was switch to a rap station, goose up the bass, and drive up and down the streets, yelling their names out the window at 7:00 a.m. and hope they heard me. That was a fall back position.