Taking It (10 page)

The mailbox was one of the usual silvery aluminum boxes, with the numbers written neatly in Magic Marker, 22219. I couldn't see the house very well, but I sensed another one-story stucco box behind a spiky, cactus-type plant.

Lincoln was awake now, sniffing my ear. He scrambled over the bucket seat and put his nose to the window crack.

I turned off the engine. Everything was quiet. I had lost track of the time, but I had to guess it was one in the morning, or even later. The numbers on the mailbox were drawn in what looked like a familiar way, carefully, by someone who could get a job painting signs if he had to.

I sat in the car. The pea gravel in the front lawn was pale, and there were old thrown-away newspapers on the walkway up to the house. It had to be a mistake.

I told Lincoln I would be back. He whined and made one of his half barks, half words, but he stayed put.

I would either have the right house and everything would be wonderful or I would have the wrong house and it would be embarrassing, but nothing worse than that. I got out of the car, bringing my purse, and holding the car keys in my hand, like they were proof of my harmless intentions.

The car made cooling, metallic ticks sitting there, giving off heat as I passed it. My feet crunched the white gravel that had crept up over the walkway to the front steps, and every detail about the place was wrong.

It's not a good feeling, standing in a place thinking: wrong street, wrong town. There was a far-off television sound, laughter, a voice. Even the doorbell was wrong, a black button encircled by a tarnished yellow metal. I gave the button a push.

Someone was there sooner than I expected, so suddenly I stepped back and put a hand to my throat.

A large figure stood behind the screen door, a silhouette in front of the glow of living-room light. There was a long moment when nothing moved. The screen door opened with a dry little creak.

But still nothing was happening, nothing human, nothing that mattered.

Arms opened and took me in.

It was like winning the contest, numbers flashing, applause. Say hello to America, Anna Teresa.

That's what he was calling me, with a big hug, my feet off the ground. “Anna Teresa!”

Only Ted calls me that, my first two names. And only Ted gives those big, breath-squeezing hugs. But I was speechless, looking up at Ted when we were inside, a man as tall as Dad and looking like him, too.

“You look different,” Ted was saying.

“Worse,” I suggested.

“Dad was worried sick. He had an idea you were heading my way,” said Ted.

“I drove down,” I said, realizing as I said it how dumb I sounded, saying something unnecessary.

“Any trouble?” People always say this, meaning: How was your trip, meaning: It's good to see you.

“I need your help, Ted,” I said, near tears.

“I bet you're hungry,” he said.

“I have to talk to you,” I said, barely getting the words out. But I began to feel a sense of security. I was okay now. Nothing bad could happen to me here.

Ted was brisk, businesslike, very friendly but also very much in charge. He called up Dad and handed me the phone, and I told Dad I was here and that the car had driven perfectly well, no problems. I told him I was sorry I hadn't left a note, but it was all right now.

Dad just kept saying, “God, Anna, if you had only just said something—”

I told him he was right, but he wasn't.

When I was off the phone, I went into the bathroom and peed and after that I took a look at myself in the mirror over the sink. I looked like a drawing in a coloring book, places where eyes and lips would be when you color them in.

22

A voice in my head said: You forgot.

I ran out of the house, car keys in my hand.

Lincoln jumped up on Ted. Ted half-patted, half-wrestled the dog down with a laugh. “Lincoln, you have no manners.” I sighed. I had further proof that the Deans did not know how to deal with a dog.

“Why don't you buy him a leash?” Ted worked at the knot at Lincoln's collar and tossed the gray rope into a corner.

“That's a good idea,” I said.

Ted cranked open a can of Bonnie Hubbard beef hash. Lincoln wolfed it in thirty seconds. Then he left the room and I could hear sloppy, lapping noises, Lincoln drinking out of the toilet.

“How long have you had a dog?” asked Ted.

“Not long,” I said.

I sat at a small kitchen table with a toaster and a stack of paper napkins still in the package, the top torn open so you could pull out a napkin when you needed one. There was a peanut-butter jar that held pencils, yellow eraser-tipped pencils and the blue pencils for drafting.

Lincoln made his way in, the nails of his paws making clicking noises on the tiles. He lay down against a wall. Ted was stirring some tomato soup at a stove, an old range with black knobs. He poured the soup into a bowl and crumbled saltines into it without asking, the way we always liked it as children. I hadn't eaten tomato soup like that since seventh grade, but I didn't say anything.

Ted was making a big show of pouring me milk and offering me some Pepperidge Farm chocolate chip cookies, but he was chattering. Ted had never talked like this, filler talk, stuff you say when you are getting used to having a visitor. I had expected to sit down with Ted and start with the important subjects.

Ted was telling me he knew I could read a map. He hadn't left the porch light on because it was broken. The landlord was a man who lived in Hemet; all Ted had to do was send the rent check to a PO box. Ted said he was usually asleep by now, but he had stayed up, expecting me.

Chatter. It was good to see him and hear him, but Ted was different now. He was tanned, and his hair was the same color as Dad's, dirty blond. I had the feeling Ted might have gotten a tattoo or something, made some drastic alteration in himself. But I looked him up and down, Levi's and a white V-necked T-shirt, and running shoes with no laces, the feet just stuck in, slipper-fashion. He needed a shave.

“I had to talk to you,” I said.

“You're having trouble,” he said, sitting down across from me.

He was sipping a glass of milk, nonfat, the only kind either of us would drink. He was sitting looking at me, patient and friendly. This was the Ted I wanted.

“So much has been happening,” I began. And then I couldn't talk, looking around at the yellow, speckled floor. I had so much to say I couldn't say anything.

“The sofa's pretty comfortable,” he said. “I set out some blankets.”

I shook my head. How could I even think of sleep?

“We have time,” he said. “All kinds of time.”

I blinked, clearing my vision. I found myself considering his words.
All kinds of time
. I couldn't finish my soup.

“Look how tired you are,” he said. “You drove five hundred miles today.”

I couldn't help being irritated with Ted. I was with him at last and he was saying the same kind of thing Dad says, trying to be nice and giving me a caring, interested look, but about two chapters behind.

“Mother wants me to move in with her,” I said.

“Well, I can understand that being a problem,” Ted said. He was in an orbit far from Mom and Dad, and when he couldn't make it to Mom's wedding, no one was really surprised.

“She's not the person she used to be,” I said. I had almost said
the same wretch she used to be
.

“Years of therapy, working at last,” he said.

“She's trying to be reasonable, the poor thing,” I said. I meant to roll my eyes when I said this, but my timing was off, and the statement came out flat, truthful.

He smiled, but there was something wrong with him.

“You're tired,” I said.

“I have to get up in the morning,” he said.

I hesitated. The saltines collect at the bottom of the bowl. I stirred the floury paste for a moment. “You haven't met Adler,” I said.

“What's he like?”

Sometimes a question is too big.

I was tired after all. Tired and used up. The kitchen was small, dishes in a rack, a coffee mug, a glass. I had half-expected my brother to be living with someone. There was a shelf, salt and pepper, instant coffee, Hershey's powdered cocoa. My brother and I are crazy about the stuff.

“Connie moved out,” he said.

Reading my mind. It's nice to have a brother, but a little scary, as though he might know something about me that I had forgotten.

23

It was early, the room gray light.

Lincoln's snout was in my face. The furniture was sagging, tattered at the corners, including the sofa I was lying on. One of the seat cushions had fallen off the sofa during the night.

I was crippled. I hunched over to the TV and turned it on. I kept the sound off, the way Dad does, looking at the screen to make sure life is still going on. I heard Ted in the bedroom, a drawer opening and closing. I was about to beat him to the bathroom, something I used to be pretty good at, but he got there first.

There was a collection of things on the coffee table, cigarettes, my purse, a
Scientific American
. The pages were stuck together with what looked like spilled Coke. My espadrilles toed together on the carpet. My dress was on the floor. I like silk, but it tends to wrinkle. The woman at Maxi's says I may be more of a cotton person.

Lincoln whined at the back door and I let him out. There was a concrete patio with a barbecue. Lincoln squatted beside a hibiscus with three blossoms.

When Ted was out of the bathroom and thumping around in the bedroom, I moved fast. My brother has nice soap, Neutrogena, soothing, with a clean smell. I took a shower and washed my hair with his yucca blossom shampoo.

I wandered into the kitchen, drying my hair with a Gold's Gym towel. Ted was making cocoa for two, using real sugar. When he took the cocoa out of the microwave, it was delicious.

Lincoln was back in the kitchen, nosing the air.

“A dog like that must eat a lot,” said Ted.

“I thought you were something big in landscaping,” I said.

“We have to hurry,” Ted replied. “I'm running late.”

He was shaved and smelled of aftershave, his hair combed back. He was twenty-three, and had been in and out of college, UCLA, Fullerton State. He wore a denim shirt with an orange undershirt showing at the collar, and the same Levi's as the night before. He was wearing work shoes, scuffed and old, with new red laces.

I should have expected this, but it surprised me. Despite what he had said the night before, I had imagined him taking the day off.

“You landscape the yard here?” I said.

He put toast into the toaster, an ancient appliance with blackened crumbs all over the top.

“Those old newspapers out on the front step,” I continued. “I like that casual, sun-baked look. Nice touch.

“Beautiful job on the backyard, too,” I said.

He didn't respond. He kept smiling, starting to hum something under his breath.

“Good cocoa,” I said.

He said, “You don't have to drink it.”

I was going to be quiet for a while, eat toast and plum jam, look out the window at the smog between the back door and the mountains. But I found myself saying, “I thought you would live someplace nice.”

“You're disappointed,” he said.

“Someplace Zen, raked sand and a few maple trees, maybe a pool, a few fish.”

“Maybe a monk,” he said, “propped against a rock.”

“All I see is cement.”

He opened a can of Spam and put it on a plate by the back door. The dog nosed it around the floor, having trouble picking it up. Ted put a slice of toast on a plate and gave it to me. He let his piece cool for a while in the toaster and then picked it out and ate it, no butter, no jam.

I shut up. Maybe he was in a bad mood. He would start quoting things like, “That which does not kill me makes me strong,” or the one about it's easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to get into heaven if you have any kind of taste in clothes.

“The sofa was pretty comfortable,” I said.

“I'm saving up for some new things,” he said. “A new sofa, a television, maybe a home entertainment center.” He said this ironically, but he probably had something expensive planned, something that would make Beethoven echo off the canyons.

I said, “I see how you can use some entertainment.”

We left Lincoln tied to a water pipe in the concrete emptiness of the backyard. We left him with a plastic basin full of water. Ted tied a triple knot in the gray rope, but I was sure Lincoln would get it undone and escape. There was nothing I could do.

Ted drove a red Toyota pickup. The
Toyota
on the tailgate had been partly colored in to read
OYO
.

His neighborhood was even worse in daylight, chain-link fences and pregnant women with five little children. We drove through housing tracts, some new, some worn-out, until we got to some open space.

“Connie and I didn't exactly break up,” he said, responding to my question. “She decided she didn't like living with me. It was a setback, but I'll see her Friday night.”

Lincoln was going to be gone when I got back. I looked out at the ash-gray scenery, hating it.

“We're clearing boulders,” said Ted, driving fast, much faster than I usually go. “Tearing out some sage, some creosote. We used to have a bigger crew, but one guy popped a nerve in his neck and another guy had something wrong with his green card. Immigration people arrested him. And one guy got bit by a baby rattlesnake. He couldn't handle the stress. So the rest of us are busy.”

“You talk like this all the time now?” I asked.

He looked over at me, his glance saying: Like what?

“You used to talk like a book, Thoreau or someone. Now you sound like a work jock.”

“We have a break at ten-thirty,” he said, after a very long pause.