Mendocino and Other Stories (14 page)

“She knew them,” I say.

“Knew who?” He has turned from me slightly; he is glancing longingly at the headlines of the afternoon paper.

“The people,” I say. “The man.”

He nods, still looking away, but I have his attention now.

“He was a judge. John Mehring. He was forty-one.”

Thomas is forty. He looks up at me, his wide, clear brow etched with three deep wrinkles, wrinkles that are there even when his face is at peace. “Really,” he says, and it is not a question.

I pick up Jenny. “He wants his dinner,” I say, bouncing her a little, “and it's bedtime for you.”

I have pot roast for him tonight, and he is very sure to praise it, it's perfect, the salad is perfect, the perfect dinner, the perfect home.

We do the dishes together, not talking, but when the water is off he takes my hands and says he is sorry he ever told me about the man. It was something the realtor accidentally let slip—the people who owned the house right before us didn't even know.

“Of course you should have told me,” I say. “It would have been worse if you hadn't.”

“Worse how? You'd be better off not knowing.”

I pull my hands from his. “You don't understand,” I say. I turn
from him and start sponging off the counter. He stays still for so long I wonder whether he's waiting for me to speak. Finally he touches my wrist, and I look up at him.

“Maybe I don't,” he says, “but I'd like to.”

“Don't you see?” I say. “If you hadn't told me, it would have been between us.” I press my lips together; I'm afraid I might cry.

“Claire,” he says.

His eyes are red with fatigue, and for a moment I can see how it must be for him, wondering how his wife can spend day after day thinking about something he hasn't lost a minute to. I raise my hands to his neck, slipping the fingers of one hand into his collar, sliding the others along the soft skin under his hair. He lifts his hands and takes hold of my shoulders, but gingerly, as if they might be hot to the touch.

HE NEVER ASKS
me about Jenny's father. That's how he refers to him when he has to mention him: Jenny's father. As if he doesn't know his name. It's rubbed off on me, so that I rarely think
Ben.
I rarely see him in my mind's eye, the way I used to during the months at my parents', when I would sit out by the pool in my navy blue maternity bathing suit and imagine that in five or ten minutes he'd come around the side of the house carrying a six-pack of beer and a dog-eared paperback. It got so I would tense up with waiting for him, with the expectation of seeing him in one of his ripped T-shirts, his bony bare feet.

I FOUND A
morning playgroup for Jenny; today is her first day. I was planning to stay, to sit on the sidelines in case she needed me, but the woman who runs the group told me it would be harder that way. For both of us, she said.

So I'm on my way to town. I would have preferred to take a walk until the playgroup was over, but there are no sidewalks up in our neighborhood—just gravel shoulders, and small cars whipping the curves. It's October, and the hills are still the same grey-brown color they were when we arrived. It's hard to believe that rain will come and change things.

I park in front of the travel agent's where the grey-haired woman works. Part-time, she said. I get out of the car and stand at the window with my hands cupped around my eyes and yes, there she is.

The door chimes as I go in. She gives me a formal smile.

“I said I'd stop in someday,” I say, not sure she recognizes me, not sure what I'll say next. It doesn't seem possible to just ask what I want to know.

“Of course,” she says, a little distantly—and it was only a week ago that we met. A pair of glasses hangs from a chain around her neck, and she unfolds them and puts them on. “Of course,” she says again, smiling now. “Claire, nice to see you. Are you planning a trip?”

I sit in the chair in front of her desk. “Yes,” I lie. “We want to spend Christmas in Chicago with my parents if Thomas can get away.”

She asks for dates and I invent them. She taps them into her machine.

“I just want to make reservations for now,” I say.

She looks up at me and purses her lips. “Then you can't get the good fares,” she says. “The airlines won't let you reserve without paying.”

“Oh, dear,” I say. “Thomas doesn't know—”

“Maybe you should come back when your plans are more definite?”

“Yes,” I say. “I'll come back.” I stand up and turn away, then
turn back. “Oh, I almost forgot. Thomas is so curious about the Mehrings. His wife. Widow. Did she leave the area? I thought she must have, but—”

“She's down here in the valley somewhere,” she says. “I'm afraid I've rather lost touch.”

“Was it violent? Of course it couldn't be less our business, but—”

“I don't know the details,” she says. “He had cancer.”

“My God,” I say. Something inside me shifts, clears. “I didn't realize he was sick.”

“Well,” she says. “I heard they were giving him at least a year.”

A fist closes back around me. I turn for the door, thanking her for her help. I hurry to the car, wanting very badly to get back to Jenny.

THERE'S ONLY ONE
Mehring in the phone book; it can't be that common a name. 7237 Loma Vista. It's listed under John, too, which I guess is understandable. She wouldn't want people thinking she was a woman living alone. Is she a woman living alone?

In a tiny, dark house.

THE LOCAL PAPER
is indexed at the public library. It's a raw, grey morning, and I'm the only one here, aside from the librarian. She explains the system graciously enough, but behind her tortoiseshell glasses her eyes are curious. I said I was a student over at Stanford, and certainly I look young enough to pass; perhaps I look too young to pass. Perhaps she thinks I'm a high school girl, playing hookey. Thomas is prematurely grey, and at restaurants in Italy men used to nudge each other, even wink occasionally. I was twenty-four, and at night I would stand and stare into the mirror,
looking for a sign that something, Jenny or Thomas, had put some age in my face.

There are a number of entries under his name, and I twist through the microfiche, looking. His appointment to court, judgments, sentencings, and finally I find it, October 24th, 1979, the obituary. “Judge John Mehring was found dead in his home last night … cause of death was not stated … survived by his wife, Alice, and two daughters, Carol, 8, and Cathy, 14.” There is a picture of him in his robe, smiling, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. I stare at it, trying to read the eyes, the mouth.

HE SAYS WE
should get out more. He suggests the opera, the symphony, he learns about out-of-the-way restaurants, Italian, always Italian, he offers a weekend in Mendocino, at Tahoe, on our own in an elegant small hotel in San Francisco. But I don't want to leave Jenny.

I DRIVE SLOWLY
, looking at the numbers on the mailboxes, until I find it. 7237. It's a medium-sized pea-green house, identical in nearly every detail to the grey one on its left, the white one on its right. It's mid-morning, and the street is quiet. I can tell just by looking that no one is home. She works, of course. Alice.

Surely Cathy has grown up and moved away, but Carol must still live here, a high school student alone with her mother, eating TV dinners in silence, going early to her room, her books, her telephone.

I accelerate until I am around the corner, then I park and walk back. I stand on the sidewalk for a few minutes, just looking. There's a picture window that must be the living room, but there's too much glare and I can't see in. I look around. There's no one on
the street, no cars coming as far as I can tell. I take a step up the walk, then another, until I'm too close to turn back; then I hurry forward, squeeze between the bushes and the house, and cup my hands around my eyes.

A couch, a couple of chairs, a TV. A bookcase full of books. A doorway leading to a kitchen. What did I expect? But I'm glued here, straining to read titles, to see what's in the one frame hanging on the wall—a painting or a mirror. It's too dark to tell.

“DEAR THOMAS,” I
write. “What I have to say is this. It's not so much that you don't know me, as that you don't seem to know that you don't know me.” I cross it out.

“Dear Thomas,” I write. “We need to talk—we need to
have
talked.” No.

“Dear Thomas,” I write. “I feel like I'm holding my breath. I feel like something is going to shatter.”

Dear Thomas, I can't write to you.

THE STREET LOOKS
different at night. Living room lights are on; there are cars in driveways; and inside, although I can't see them, people are getting ready for dinner. It makes me wish I lived in a house where you could see your neighbors' lights.

I brake across from 7237. Jenny starts playing with the belt on her car seat and I tell her No, we're not getting out. We're just looking.

All the lights are on and I can see the back of someone's head above the couch against the living room window. The TV isn't on; maybe she's reading or just thinking. Today's the 28th of October; he died eight years ago last Friday. Does she think
died
or
killed himself?

“Mommy,” Jenny says, impatiently. She's not used to being out at this hour; neither am I. But Thomas has a dinner meeting tonight.

“In a minute, Sweetie,” I say. I lean back and kiss the top of her head. I love it when I pull my mouth away and some of her silky hair comes with it.

When I look back at the house I see that someone else has come into the living room. I take Thomas's binoculars out of their case and train them on the window.

It's a teenaged girl. Carol. She's tall and pretty, with shoulder-length blond hair. She's talking, smiling, waving a hand for emphasis. Her mother, whose hair is short and dark, nods once or twice. Then the girl turns and walks through the doorway to the kitchen.

After a moment I realize I'm holding my breath, waiting for Alice to get up and follow her. But she doesn't. She stays where she is. She sits alone with her head bent. A few minutes later, my neck stiff, I lower the binoculars. Alice hasn't moved.

“CLAIRE,” HE SAYS
, “maybe you should talk to someone.”

“Why can't I talk to you?” I say.

“I mean someone professional. Someone who might be able to help you sort things out. You seem so unhappy.”

I stare out the window, into the blackness.

“OK,” he says, “talk to
me.
”

I turn to face him.

“
Talk
to me,” he says, standing up. “Talk to me,” he says, coming toward me, coming closer until there is almost no space between us. “Talk to me,” he says, wrapping his arms around me and holding me close.

But now that we are like this—now that I am almost literally surrounded by him—I can't think of anything that I want to say.

“Talk to me,” he says.

“Don't move,” I say.

HERE I AM
again, on Loma Vista. I'm parked right in front of the house, watching the rain run down the car windows. I'm supposed to be buying myself a new dress—Thomas's idea—but I don't really want one.

I think Alice is in there alone. Either that or no one's home; I saw Carol leave about half an hour ago.

Go all out, Thomas said. Get something gorgeous. Surprise me. This would surprise him: this waiting, this watching. But he'll never know and what disturbs me is, he might not want to.

A light goes on in the living room and there's Alice, looking out the window. Is she looking at me? I turn away and stare straight ahead. I count to fifty; very slowly. When I'm done, I look back and she's still there. She raises her hand and waves at me; my heart is pounding. A moment later she opens the front door and comes down the walk, a little red umbrella held open over her head. When she gets to the car she comes around and I roll down my window.

“Can I help?” she says.

“Help?”

“Would you like to use my phone?”

“Oh,” I say. “I hadn't thought of that.”

“Come on in,” she says. “You must be freezing.”

I get out of the car and follow her up the walk, my legs like rubber. When we get inside, she turns around and looks at me, and her face is much younger than I ever imagined. There are wrinkles
around her wide-set green eyes, but otherwise her skin is smooth. “I saw you sitting there—oh, it must have been a good hour ago,” she says. “When I looked again just now I couldn't believe you were still there. Car trouble? The phone's through here.” She leads me through the living room to the kitchen. “I'm Alice Mehring, by the way,” she says, putting out her hand.

“Thank you,” I say, and shake it. She gives me a funny look. “Oh,” I say. “I'm Claire, Claire … Thomas.”

She looks me over and I think, Now she's going to realize she's let a perfect stranger into her house and she's going to get scared. But she says, “You
are
cold, aren't you? Would you like some tea?”

I open my mouth to answer, to say that there's nothing wrong with my car and I don't need the phone and I'd better leave; but nothing comes out.

“Is that a yes or a no,” she says, laughing. She opens a cupboard. “We've got English Breakfast, which is what I drink, plus about ten kinds of herbal tea my daughter tells me to buy. I don't think she's ever actually tried any of them, but every now and then some new flavor pops up on my grocery list.” She smiles at me. “What'll it be?”

“English Breakfast, I guess,” I say. “It's so nice of you.”

“It's nothing. Do you need a phone book?” She opens a drawer. “Help yourself.”

I take the phone book and sit at the kitchen table. I watch her fill a kettle with water and set it on the stove.

I can't call home; what would I say to Thomas?

“Do you need a jump?” she says. “I could call my son-in-law, I'm sure he's got cables.”

I look up at her. “There's nothing wrong with my car,” I say. To my dismay, tears swim in front of my eyes.

She puts a hand to her throat and takes a step backward. “No?”

I shake my head. “I was just sitting there because I, uh—” I shrug my shoulders. My eyes are burning. Tears begin to trail down my cheeks.