Range of Light (9 page)

Adele was laughing again. Taking a long draft of Bud and laughing at Mick Jagger (how could she understand the words?). Laughing. Her clean, well-shaped fingernails keeping time to the music on the highly polished, round table.

On loan. She would return with her lawyer-husband, and she and I would raise our kids together.

“Dance?” He was leaning over Adele like a hatchet blade. A tall, red-haired guy with a scruffy beard.

She gave him a radiant smile. Her theatrics caused, no doubt, by the beer. How could she get out of this?

Adele was standing now, giving Red her hand. “Enchanted,” she said as if she were Catherine Deneuve. And off they went, bopping to “I Can't Get No Satisfaction.” Adele moaned about being a klutz, but she was a graceful, exuberant dancer. Old Red seemed to think so, too, from the way he looked at her. Leered. Well, it wouldn't last long. I hadn't been abandoned. This was why people went to a dancing club—to dance. People danced, then they sat down again. Worrying was useless. Nancy would be out there twisting away with someone
she
had asked to dance. Would Nancy be hurt we hadn't invited her? No, she knew Adele and I had a unique friendship, didn't she? Didn't we? Maybe Adele had come to dance, but I had come to be with Adele. To escape the doldrums of Alameda County in July. To see if we could sneak past the bouncer, to take a dare. All fairly immature reasons.

“Excuse me.” His voice was almost inaudible. Almost.

“Yes?” Damn. Why did I respond?

He had a great face. Flushed and blue-eyed behind the glasses. And a shy way of standing off to the side, like he didn't want to be in the way in case I might rush to the bathroom to throw up. Momentarily, he seemed to forget why he was talking to me.

Then, suddenly, “Would you like to dance?”

Inadvertently, I looked out to Adele, who was being transported by Red or the music.

“Sure.” I shrugged.

His dancing was, unbelievably, worse than mine. Really, this was mortifying. The whole room had become the scene of an exaggerated mating ritual. Swiveling hips and shaking breasts and bedroom eyes. As I moved stiffly to the beat, I realized these were the frigid judgments of my Calvinist father, who would have grounded me for the rest of the summer if he learned what I was doing tonight. Tom—I'd discovered his name—looked equally uncomfortable. Tense, goodwilled, and seventy-five before his time. Amusement spread across my face. Encouraged, he smiled back. My eyes sought out Adele and old Red, who seemed to be levitating from joy or booze. It might be a long night. I tried a little more shine in my step.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let's take a break.” My relief at the dancing being over was replaced with panic about elusive conversation topics. Damn Adele's effervescence.

“Charlie and your friend seem to be having a great time,” Tom said, tipping the pitcher toward my glass.

“You know him? Charlie, huh?”

“Yeah, we work together—down at Don's Automotive. I slipped him two bucks to ask her to dance.”

“Come again.”

“I mean, I've been watching you for an hour, and I knew I would lose my dancing nerve soon. Something told me you wouldn't have accepted if she was still sitting here.”

“Well.” I struggled, flattered, flustered. “You're right. As you can see, I'm not much of a dancer.”

“Me either. Nothing compared to Miss and Mr.
American Bandstand
out there.”

We were talking about camping when Adele and Charlie joined us.

“So how are you two?” Charlie asked, taking a long drink from Tom's beer, finishing the glass.

I tried to catch Adele's eye, but she was still buzzing to the music.

We double-dated a couple of Saturdays. After our evening of
What's New, Pussycat?
at the drive-in, I knew there wouldn't be a third time.

Adele phoned the next morning. “So if that wasn't a nightmare.”

“Guess you and Charlie weren't matched in Heaven.”

“I'll say. The toxic dose of Old Spice was one thing. The grime under his fingernails was another. But his idea of conversation is what did me in. Baseball. Bowling. Rocky and Bullwinkle?”

I lay back on the couch, grateful that Mom was out of earshot. A solid wall was closing between Adele and me. I had actually enjoyed Tom. A lot. He was intelligent in a quiet way. He liked hiking, birds, geology. Was teaching himself guitar. And he behaved toward me as no one ever had. He insisted I never cut my long, blond hair. Said I was pretty, in a different sort of way. Original. I had found someone I could be close to—separate from my family, yet not exactly a stranger.

“Doesn't sound like your type, Del.”

She laughed. “Not exactly. You and Tom put on a good show.” She waited.

I waited.

“You don't really
like him
,
do you?” Her voice was nervous.

“He's OK.”

“Kath, I can hear between the lines. Be serious!”

“I'm too young to be serious.” I laughed, anxiously. Leaning forward to the coffee table, I started filling in Mom's jigsaw puzzle of the Golden Gate Bridge.

“I mean, he's not right for you—not in any long-term, ever-after way.”

“Why?” I asked, knowing I shouldn't. “Why? What do you mean?”

“Well, he doesn't even plan to go to college, does he?”

“He already has a job.”

“But a career? Be serious, I mean, he's a mechanic.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“You want to marry some guy who works in a garage? What would you talk about at night? Cams and mags and transmissions?”

“First, who's thinking marriage? We've only dated a couple of times. And second, he talks about a lot of interesting things. He's smart. I—”

“But dating is practice for the future. And you're not going to make your life with a mechanic?”

“My dad is a mechanic. My mother married a mechanic.”

“Married!” Adele shrieked dramatically to mask her faux pas. “Married! There you go. I thought you weren't talking marriage.”

“I wasn't. Oh, Del, you get things so twisted.”

“Let's drop it, Kath. Let's just forget it. Who wants to fight?”

For the rest of that summer, I didn't see much of Tom. I told him I was too busy helping Martha with her new baby, Kirsten. There was a strange, new softness to Martha these days—as well as an incredible fatigue—I was honestly beginning to like her. Adele and I stayed away from Tweezer's and spent what spare time we had going to movies, catching up on the past year and, of course, planning for the Sierra trip. Three days before we were supposed to go, Nancy totaled her father's car and we spent vacation week visiting her at the hospital. I didn't see Tom again until September, when he showed up unexpectedly at my dorm.

The next June,
Adele brought
home her new boyfriend. She said she knew I would love Lou. She
actually said
he reminded her of me. Bright, sensitive, socially concerned, witty. He wanted to apply to divinity school and minister to people in the inner city. Great, she pictured me as some kind of burbling missionary?

Of course I was supposed to show up eagerly the first night to meet him, but I didn't want to feel outnumbered. Tom agreed to a double date. Adele suggested pizza in Berkeley, but Tom was antsy; he wanted to drive somewhere and proposed Carmel. The Yale boyfriend had always wanted to see the Monterey Peninsula, so it was agreed.

Tom waited in the car as I knocked on the Wards' front door. Mrs. Ward answered in a powder blue pants suit, the kind of outfit that made her look ten years younger than my mother.

“Why, Katherine.” Mrs. Ward looked over the rims of her glasses. “So lovely to see you after all this time. How are you enjoying Sacramento State?”

“Davis, Mrs. Ward. Fine. The cows and I get along fine.” Why was I such a brat? Mrs. Ward had always been a little absent-minded.

She smiled uncertainly. “Yes, well, I was hoping your young man would come in for a glass of iced tea”—she grew distracted, observing Tom's vintage Dodge Lancer, which was idling in front of the house—“before that long trip on the freeway.”

“Kath!” Adele came running from the kitchen. She threw her arms around my shoulders and rocked me back and forward. “Kath! Kath! How great to see you.”

A tall, dark-haired guy appeared from the corridor.

Excitedly, Adele declared, “Kath, this is Lou. Lou, Kath.”

We shook hands. His fingers were long and tapered. His palms definitely clammy.

Unable to hold his glance, I stared into the living room at the black grand piano, highly polished and graced with a silver vase of fresh pink roses. Mrs. Ward talked about her Juilliard training as the best years of her life. It angered Adele that she hardly ever touched the piano now. I found it sad.

“Your father's offer of the car still stands,” Mrs. Ward said merrily. I could tell she was being careful not to slur any of her words. Adele told me she had increased the tranquilizers. “It's a safe,
large
car, and I'm sure you'd all be very comfortable. I believe he filled the tank last night.”

Adele watched me cautiously.

“Thanks, Mrs. Ward, but we'll be fine in Tom's Lancer. He takes good care of it, you know, he's a mechanic.” I could feel his impatience. “And we should probably get going.”

Tom's car rode
low to
the ground. I'd forgotten how poor the back springs were. After a few perfunctory attempts to engage the guys, Adele and I gossiped about Nancy's new husband, the last term at school and our families. Tom moved his powerful shoulders to the radio music. Lou seemed content to peer out the window as if he were studying California for a geography paper. Grudgingly, I had to admit he was a nice guy, kind of cute in a pale way.

By the time we got to Carmel, we were all famished. So we drove straight down Ocean Avenue to the beach and laid out the picnic blanket.

“You'll have to visit us in Europe next year,” Lou said expansively.

I looked puzzled. Adele and I should have spent some time alone first. What other headlines loomed? Did they have twins in the picnic basket?

We sank into tense silence.

Tom looked from me to Adele. “OK, let's run this by one more time. You're both going to Europe?”

My fists clenched at my sides. Adele had promised that her next trip would be with me, that we would go hiking in Switzerland, in an area a lot like the Sierra.

“I got accepted at Edinburgh!” Adele did her best to be celebratory. “Remember I wrote you I was applying for junior year abroad?”

“Sort of,” I said, hearing my father's suspicious reserve. She must have known about this acceptance for some time.

“Anyway, I got in. And Lou won a fellowship at Heidelberg. So we'll both be in Europe next year.” She took a gulp of air.

“Nice.” I nodded with my upper body as if I were in an oversized rocking chair, then concentrated on cutting ham and cheese sandwiches.

“So we, well, I haven't even asked Adele about this, but I'm sure she'd agree, were thinking you might like to come over for Christmas.” He smiled with genuine enthusiasm.

What was with Mr. Perfect Friendliness? I checked my anger. Maybe Adele had been keeping this surprise for our walk tomorrow. I hated that Lou knew things about her I didn't.

Lou warmed to his hospitality. “We could go cross-country skiing, attend midnight mass in some small village church.” He caught the quizzical expression on Tom's face. “As a cultural experience, of course.”

“I'd love to join you all,” Tom said, swallowing a bite of ham and cheese, “but I'll be abroad myself next summer.”

Carefully, I wiped the rim of the mayonnaise jar and returned it to the basket. Breathing deeply, I opened the mustard.

“Oh, yes?” Lou responded with painful good fellowship. “Where will you be, Tom?”

“I have a grant from the U.S. government to study delta insects in Vietnam.”

I knew Adele and Lou had been on antiwar marches. I kept my eyes lowered.

Adele interceded. “What branch of the service, Tom?” She maintained an even voice.

“Army,” Tom offered, reaching into the cooler for a third bottle of Olympia. “Care for one, Lou? It's not Beck's, but it's got a decent taste.”

“No, no thanks,” Lou said uneasily, “I've had enough.”

Conversation careened downhill from one pothole to the next. Lou was eager to hike at Point Lobos. In fact, Adele said, he had been rhapsodizing about California sea otters since he got off the plane. Tom, on the other hand, was determined to play the pinball machines at the Monterey pier. Come on, I cajoled him, let's accommodate our visitor—I almost said visitors—and drive down to Point Lobos. After all, there were plenty of pinball machines in Oakland. But he was becoming more intransigent with each beer. Finally we compromised on us going to the pier, Lou and Adele taking the car down the coast and all of us meeting at the end of the afternoon.

Tom had sobered up on coffee by the time Lou and Adele returned. I offered to drive back, but Tom would have none of it. The engine developed a deafening clank and he said not to worry, this happened all the time. He raised the volume on the radio to muffle the racket, thereby making conversation impossible.

“Mrs. Robinson.”

“Yellow Submarine.”

“The Windmills of Your Mind.”

So much for the luxurious day of catching up with Adele. Claustrophobic, I pressed against the window, brooding on the freeway ahead.

Chapter Ten

Adele

1965-1976 / California, Massachusetts, Edinburgh, California

KATH LEANED against our
teal garage door,
her old red bike sprawled on the nearby grass. With a James Dean slouch, she tolerated the dust storm of packing, waited for my family to stuff ourselves into Father's new Lincoln Continental.

“Taking a new car, only a week old, I don't know, Geoffrey,” my mother had said.

“It's not a horse, Eleanor.” He shook his graying head. My father was growing ever the more distinguished doctor in appearance, attitude. “There's a complete guarantee: parts and labor. They have Lincoln dealerships even in the wilds of Massachusetts. Although why Adele had to go back East when Stanford is a first-rate school …”

I supposed one day Father would forgive me for defecting from California. Kath, too, who had hoped we would be at Davis together. I couldn't explain my choice, really. Perhaps it was extravagant. Perhaps I was being selfish, for Sari and Mother also hated my going. But something insisted I leave. Of course I hadn't anticipated departing in a caravan. This kind of distance was why they invented airplanes, I had argued. I dreaded traveling in the family prison van across the entire country.

“Shhh,” Mother had said. “A vacation will be good for Sari's condition.”

Even at home we had to whisper about Sari seeing a psychiatrist. The only “outsider” I had told was Kath, and Mother would have murdered me if she knew I hadn't kept it “in the family.” Kath's response was typically useful. “Well, that's nothing to worry about if it's making her happier. I mean, she needs help, so short of a visit from the baby Jesus, the shrink is probably a good idea.”

The word
shrink
made me feel better. How was I going to get along without Kath's irreverence? My heart sank as I regarded this friend, who was staring at the bright blue August sky, cracking her knuckles with studied indifference. Since Kath was no letter writer, today was a real farewell. Madly I wanted to wave to my family and drive off with Kath.

I distracted myself by engaging with Mother's hysteria about maps and sandwiches and an extra coat for everyone in case it got chilly in Colorado. Since Kath had remained dry-eyed and laconic throughout the morning, I made sure to sniff back my tears before hugging her.

“Christmas isn't far off,” I said. At least that's the way I remembered it.

Kath remained on the sidewalk, her legs now astride the fiery bicycle, waving until we were out of sight. I kept peering through the back window, half-expecting her to catch up with us on the highway.

The trip, itself, was forgettable,
with my younger sister sleeping on the left side of the backseat for half the day and staring darkly out the window for the other half. On the right side of the rear seat, scrunched next to the window, I read. This was the regimen: French in the mornings when I was most alert and Victorian novels during the long afternoons. My Radcliffe Alumna sponsor had sounded dubious about California public schools' preparation. I didn't want to begin the year too far behind the other girls. I stacked the books—Camus, Sartre, Thackeray, Eliot—between Sari and myself, like a fence. Occasionally Mother would try to rouse Sari by pointing to a particularly pretty field or a funny billboard, but Sari fell more listless as the trip progressed.

“I knew it was a mistake to take her away from Dr. Logan so early in treatment,” she said, as if Sari weren't in the car with us.

Father ignored this and most of Mother's comments. Later I had nightmares about their long silences punctuated by intense arguments about whether we should get a motel with a bath (Mother's preference) or a shower (Father's). Bath or shower. Bath or shower. Bath or shower. Bath or shower in Utah, Kansas, Pennsylvania. Through the deserts and mountains and plains, Sari continued to stare out the window as if after an answer. Certainly any answers she needed were not lurking
inside
this bickering family. I pretended my parents were a background chorus to whatever I was reading, and they fit in particularly well with
No Exit.
In Cambridge, Sari's face was streaked with shock as I waved to their departing car.

That first autumn term,
I
kept a calendar over my desk and marked off the days until Christmas. The semester was much longer than I expected. In high school I had been the star of the college prep class, Dr. Ward's daughter. Here I was just one of hundreds of bright girls. Most of them had attended private academies, where they developed advanced skills in walking and talking as well as in intellectual competition. Their fathers (and some of their mothers) were astrophysicists, senators, authors. In California, I was very smart. In Massachusetts, I was still very smart, but only in the context of “brilliant,” which I surely wasn't. I lacked the sophistication, the style, the brains that were so interrelated and perhaps genetically determined. Halfway through October, I abandoned a poetry notebook crammed with sentimental images of my first fiery fall. By November I decided to be a critic. All my love of writing went into letters: dutiful letters to the family; amusing, descriptive letters to Nancy, Paula and Donna; angst-ridden letters to Kath. Her short, wry postcards were enough to keep me writing every week. And once a month, we splurged on a phone call.

The second year I started
writing home,
tentatively, about Lou. Mother was pleased that he came from a solid family—his father a history professor at Vanderbilt, his mother from old southern money. Pleased that we had been introduced properly by Lou's
older
sister. I didn't mention that we had met at an antiwar march. Kath was the only one I told about the campus peace network. Predictably, but disappointingly, she never responded with her own feelings about the war. When Lou flew to California that summer to see me, Father confided that he was a nice young fellow, emphasizing the word
young.
He was particularly cheered that Lou could play a decent game of chess.

The person I worried about most was Kath, and I felt upset when she suggested we all go down to Carmel. I had wanted the three of us to spend some quiet time together and was disappointed to find Tom still in the picture (she hadn't mentioned him in her little postcards). I hadn't told Kath I was going to marry Lou—in fact, we hadn't formally discussed it ourselves. But there were some things you knew. Well, I told myself, Kath and I had July and August ahead of us.

Strangely, we didn't see much of each other that summer after our sophomore year. We were both busy with our boyfriends. Kath had her job at Roos Atkins. Once Lou went home to Tennessee, my parents' marriage finally erupted: Mother consulting a lawyer and Father threatening to leave her penniless if she proceeded with a divorce. Was this really Dr. and Mrs. Geoffrey Ward staging a Technicolor scene? I tried to make light of it, told myself their marriage had always been rocky and this didn't affect me; I was grown up, an autonomous adult, a Radcliffe student. I kept my attention on that day in September when I could return East to Lou and school and sanity.

Sari and I escaped
the
smoke and fumes of family unrest one Saturday to take a walk down Piedmont Avenue to the cemetery where we used to play hide-and-seek as kids. Buoyed by Sari's unusual alertness, I wondered if she were on new meds but was reluctant to ask. When she was lucid like this, my sister was witty, urbane beyond her years.

“Maybe a divorce is best for both of them,” I tried.

“Yeah.” She laughed. “Might allow them to reconstruct life in friendlier places.”

“I guess they'll be lonely.” The cemetery grass was astonishingly green for this late in the summer; they must have spent a fortune on water.

“Well, Father's already got a girlfriend,” she said matter-of-factly, “if you can call that creaky, middle-aged bag at the bank a girlfriend.”

I smiled, relieved to know Sari also understood this relationship, thinking I should talk to my sister more. “Mother is still young enough, pretty enough, to find someone else.”

“The trick is finding yourself.” Sari laughed. “She doesn't need someone else.”

I wondered if this was a veiled comment about my relationship with Lou. Defensiveness kept me silent. We were walking uphill now, toward the garnish turn-of-the-century graves. The whole cemetery was vacant except for us and the gardeners and the ghosts.

“She could even go back to her music,” Sari offered.

This seemed like a long shot, but Sari had been living with her the past two years while I was far away in Massachusetts. “They shouldn't stay together if they're unhappy.”

“Yeah.”

“Strange that the lives of people I love are coming apart just as mine's coming together. I mean, Tom is leaving Kath for Vietnam soon.”

“Nothing you can do about that.”

“Well, I don't know, perhaps I shouldn't go to Edinburgh. Perhaps I should take a leave from school and stay in California with you and Mother and Kath.”

Sari turned abruptly. “No!”

“Why?”

She said something. I strained to hear her over the noise of the electric lawn mower.

“It'll all work out.”

Taken aback by her tenacity, I asked, “You'll be all right, going to Cal State in the fall?”

“I'm looking forward to the dorm. I'm ready for my own life. Really, Adele, there's nothing you can do. Stay where you are, where you want to be. Live and let live.”

The uncertainty between my ribs inflated to panic. I didn't know what to do, how to take care of my family and Kath and Lou and myself. The setting didn't help: this cemetery was a ridiculous place for a stroll. To think we actually
played
here as children. I hadn't expected to grow more confused as I matured. Was this kind of confusion the reason Mother took all those pills? Or did she herself share some kind of hereditary mental illness with Sari? My only serenity came from thinking about being near sweet, strong, loving Lou—even if we could only be as close as Scotland and Germany. It seemed the nearer I got to Lou, the farther I had to get from everyone else. Purposefully, I led us out toward the cemetery gate.

I had dreamed
the poems
would come back to me in Edinburgh. Rather, the graceful, winding streets drew me into notions of Hume, Adam Smith, Dryden, Pope. I understood how Enlightenment could have dawned in this brisk, northern city. Instead of poetry, I found myself writing long, analytical essays, enjoying the philosophy lectures as much as the literature classes. I loved the amazingly ordered world of Britain past and present, and wrote enthusiastically to Lou and Kath and my parents and Sari about the Beatles and
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
and the sales at Jenners and the ritualized high teas at the New Caledonian.

Lonely in this elegant, stimulating but still very foreign patrial land, I was eager for Kath's terse postcards. When she wrote that Tom was finally shipping out, I was ashamed at my relief. I prayed that he would return safely and that meanwhile Kath would meet someone better for her at Davis: the campus had some great graduate programs, a famous vet school, for instance, and Kath was terrific with animals. I kept her cards, all my correspondence, in a red basket next to my narrow bed and read through the latest mail before I fell asleep each night.

Sari wrote, ambivalently, to say Mother and Father were consulting a marriage counselor and she worried that Humpty-Dumpty reconstructed would become a monster. She herself was still lobbying to move to the dorms at Cal State. Father had withdrawn permission, saying housing fees were a wasteful expense since they lived only twenty minutes from campus. Increasingly, I wondered why Father had allowed me to leave California, and I worried about Sari. I wanted my sister free of that house.

Then there were letters from Lou, written in purplish black ink on beige vellum stationery. I could imagine him as a medieval monk illuminating manuscripts. He had that kind of meticulousness. But we had met in this world, in this century, and his epistles evinced no interest in vows of chastity. Those were the last letters I read before switching off the light. Always, I kept the most recent one under my pillow.

So difficult to believe that this strong, handsome, talented man was in my life, that he wanted me in his. He was given to a little exaggeration, but isn't that what romance is all about?
“You're half Girl Scout, half Isadora Duncan, a stunning combination of the good and the wild, of old-fashioned virtues like honesty, consideration and generosity, splashed with revolutionary principle and flair.”
I couldn't live up to all that, but what an encouraging change from Adele Ward, the doctor's nice daughter, from Adele, the consummate valedictorian, Adele, the friendly, practical girl from out West. I blossomed under Lou's gaze, and the farther I got from home (Radcliffe, Edinburgh), the happier I felt. The task, I realized, wasn't to reinvent yourself so much as to discover yourself. Sari was right.

Sometimes mail from “the States,” as I had learned to call it, not “America,” was unpredictable. I would receive two letters from Paula or Nancy or three packages from Mother at once. I didn't worry too much when there was no word from Kath during November. By December, I began to wonder. I asked Nancy to check on her, but Nancy couldn't locate her either. Kath was still enrolled in school but didn't answer phone calls. She could get absorbed sometimes. She would surface in her own time, Nancy advised. I walked all the way around the Meadows trying to work out my feelings. Nonchalance was fine for Nancy, secure with her husband and child. But here I was in this cold, dark country, desperate for word from my closest friend.

By late December, I grew more distracted, preparing for the Switzerland trip. I barely got off presents to Kath and my family and finished my assignments before I caught the sleeper to London. The very thought of it—Adele Ward, student of the Enlightenment, darting away to visit my lover in the Alps. Lying there in the top bunk bandaged in sterile white sheets, I thought I would never fall asleep. I imagined Mary McCarthy journeying to meet Edmund Wilson, Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre and, in time, the train's rocking rhythm won me over to sleep.