Taking It (7 page)

“Windsurfing,” I heard him say. “Riding lessons. Volunteer at Legal Aid.”

I was surprised at what I said next. “Why does Adler like Mother, anyway? What does he see in her?”

He was shaking food into the aquarium, holding a container like a pepper shaker, sprinkling Vitablend into the water. He gave me one of his best deadpan attorney looks. “Your mother's a lovely woman,” he said.

“Do I remind you of her? Is that why you can't stand me?” I meant this breezily, but it came out too blunt.

“You have so much promise,” he said. There was something in his voice, a little rasp of feeling, that touched me.

I wanted to ask him if he thought I really
did
resemble my mother. If I resembled her emotionally, I was in for years of domestic hurricane. I wanted to ask him what he thought of Adler, but I couldn't bring myself to utter his name.

I wanted to tell him there was no way I could live in the same house with my mother and Adler.

I left my jogging clothes in a heap, took a shower, tried to read a book Maureen had liked, about a blind man coming home after a war, happiness and suffering, all colorful feelings, signs of intelligent life.

That afternoon I had the tank filled at the Chevron on Solano Avenue, sitting in the full-service bay and asking the guy to please check the fluid levels and the tires. I was the best student in auto shop, not being afraid to look up at the gearbox from inside the auto bay, down underneath the car where bits of caked grease fall on you and get in your hair.

All the while I tried to forget that I was the same person of just the day before. I tried to forget, and I succeeded.

For a while.

14

I dropped by Whole Earth, the computer warehouse off Sixth Street where Stu works. I dressed like someone hunting for work, a linen skirt, wicker brown, and a linen top, a cornflower blue the woman at Maxi's called it. It was a nice blue, like the blue in the U.S. flag, only a little more pale. I carried a leather purse exactly the color of caramel. My aunt had sent it to me, and for once I liked one of her presents.

I timed it so I caught Stu on his lunch break. One look at him and I saw why I had liked him. Even eating a jumbo burrito he looked good.

He went to fling his arm around me and I stepped back. “Want a bite?” he said.

I surprised myself by biting off a little flour tortilla and some refritos and a little sour cream.

I looked good enough for Stu to want to be seen with me, and he glanced around the computer storeroom, but there was no one there but a heavy, bearded guy with a box cutter, slicing up boxes and stacking them.

“Need me to show you how to set anything up?” asked Stu. He had that smile, smart, easy to like. “We stand behind all our equipment.”

“Assistant Manager,” I said, fingering his badge. “That's new.”

“Give me six months and I'd be running this place,” said Stu.

He crumpled up the burrito wrapper and bounced it off the rim of the trash can. It fell in. Stu was fun and good-looking, and bragged in a way you knew he only half-believed.

We both knew he wouldn't be here six months. He was going to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo in September, majoring in some sort of science fiction math, three hundred miles away. We both knew how bad we both were at picking up the phone. Stu was complete and liked himself, a life-supporting planet.

“You're looking for trouble,” said Stu. He was joking, the way he does, everything about Stu a sort of easy banter.

“No more than usual,” I said.

“Then someone better be careful.”

I shrugged, acting the way I knew Stu liked me to act, teasing, mocking everything, the way he did. Stu never wanted to talk about what he called the Time Wasters, God or death or fate. He said life was all accident.

“How about tonight?” he said, not having to make any preliminary conversation, leaning back against a stack of boxes. “Take the Mustang up to the view. See what develops.”

I knew what he meant by the view, and it wasn't just a view of the Bay and the city lights. I used to think it was wonderful, the way he was so casual about everything.

“I'll pick you up about eight,” I said, although I hadn't really intended to say anything of the kind.

He looked happy, but a little thoughtful, maybe hoping we could go to Just Desserts for fudge cake, or maybe see a movie. “Are you all right, Anna?” He gave me a look like he cared, and like he was puzzled by something, as though my mind was a computer program that wasn't turning itself off and on the way it was supposed to.

“Don't they need some more help around here?” I said. “Maybe someone to watch the doors, make sure people only take out what they paid for.” I bumped him with my hip as I turned to leave. “Someone could walk right in and help themselves,” I said.

I indicated an open box full of Styrofoam noodles, the tops of smaller boxes, imprinted with
Nikon
, barely covered by the packing stuff. I looked back at Stu and his expression was bad, worried and unsure. There was a carton of Pentax binoculars. One of those would fit in one hand, lightweight.

I told myself that Stu was just nervous, here on the job, assistant manager, acting like he invented wiring. Besides, Stu didn't really know me that well, even after all this time.

“What are all these boxes?” I asked, to change the subject.

“Cameras, binoculars. Computer displays.” His tone said: You know very well what these things are.

“You have to know how everything works, right? How to hook up the tab to the slot.” If I'd had gum in my mouth I would have blown a bubble and popped it at him, acting dumb and having fun.

He stepped across the concrete floor until he had me by the arm, gently. He walked me to the sliding door, open just wide enough for a person to slip through.

I hurt him a little with the door, tugged it shut just a little as he was about to kiss me on my cheek or my ear, whatever he could get his mouth on.

“God, Anna, watch out,” he said, rubbing his elbow. “You just about broke my arm.”

I gave him a bored look: Hey, what's an arm.

But Stu didn't laugh, following behind me, leaning on the car to look at me when I sat at the steering wheel. He was about to say something serious. “Are you okay?” he asked finally.

“Why? Do I look weird?” I realized that maybe I had been looking for a job in the back of my mind, hoping that Stu would hand me an application or at least introduce me to someone.

He glanced away, trying to give me a truthful answer.

“You have burrito on your mouth,” I said.

It wasn't true.

Driving up Sacramento Street, I pulled over to the side, the brakes whining. Traffic flowed by. I was cold, sick, sure of something bad.

I couldn't bring myself to look in my purse. I knew what I would find there.

Don't look in the purse
.

My heart skipped. A police car was there in the rearview, a policeman walking up to me in the side mirror. That meant I would need my driver's license. It was in the purse, where I didn't want to look. Or maybe this was why the police were here. Stu had called them.

The policeman was right outside, tan uniform and dark glasses, a bright brass star,
BERKELEY POLICE
. I rolled the window down as far as I could, which wasn't far. I could feel the pulse in my throat.

I had tried to lie to myself. I had told myself I was going to have a perfectly normal day.

I couldn't remember taking them, but I knew: There was a new pair of Pentax binoculars in the purse.

15

I tried to open the car door, shoving hard. It stuck, and it took all my strength.

The policeman helped, pulling from his side. He was smiling, one of those officers trying to give the police a good name. He had a nice smile, and a short mustache, a V of white T-shirt showing at his collar. “Just checking to make sure you're okay,” he said.

“Is there anything wrong?” I asked.

His partner loomed behind the car, hands on his hips. “You pulled over so suddenly,” said the smiling cop.

“Suddenly?” I echoed. Be careful, I warned myself. You sound stupid. Worse than that—you sound frightened. You sound guilty.

“A little erratically,” he said.

Police are visitors from another galaxy, a galaxy where no one forgets. Computers store the names of people who have done wrong. Cops know things just by looking. I felt color seep from my clothes, from my body. I was transparent. This man could see into me, and see the unsteady, nervous creature that lived inside me.

I was taking too long to say something reassuring, standing there blinking in the bland afternoon sunlight. My best hope was that I would appear abashed, flustered. Cars were slowing down, passengers taking a look.

Everything imaginable seemed to be hanging from his belt. A billy club with an extra handle sticking out of the side, keys, handcuffs, and other things I couldn't see from the front. And, of course, a handgun.

“I'm sorry,” I said at last. I kept my voice soft, nice. I reassured myself that I wasn't in trouble. Not yet. “I thought I forgot something,” I said. “I'm not quite used to driving this car.”

“We might as well see your driver's license,” he said.

He was still smiling. Each cop must learn to do this at some point, I thought. His face was a mask, friendly, but in an impersonal way. If he had to arrest me, he would still be nice. People were looking as they rolled past, observing my little moment of theater. When the policeman saw my hesitation he said, “There's no infraction involved.”

No infraction
. The words barely sounded like English to me. I knew it was a variety of good news, though. I tugged open the door. I pulled my purse from the passenger's seat. I gathered my nerve. I told myself to go ahead, open the purse and get it over with. The police weren't going to know the difference. Doesn't everyone carry a pair of binoculars with their lipstick?

I opened the purse.

There was lip gloss, wads of Kleenex, a Princess Marcella Borghese kohl pencil, and some Max Factor mascara. My Ray-Bans were folded around a mirror with a koa-wood frame, another gift from my aunt. There was a Bic pen and a snap wallet, some Turns, and a rhinoceros-head eraser. I unsnapped the wallet, slipped the license out of its holder.

There was no pair of binoculars. I leaned against the car.

The policeman thanked me and told me to drive carefully. I thanked him for his help.

I drove very carefully, twenty-five miles an hour all the way home.

There was nothing wrong with me. I had to calm down, and not lurch around in traffic like a maniac.

I was glad to get home. I parked under a tree, in the shade.

We have a two-story house, and we keep it the way it was when Mother lived here. There are pictures on the wall only Mother liked, gray people playing blue lutes, but we leave them up, straightening them when they start to hang a little crooked.

Tina, the housekeeper, comes in a few times a week, washes, folds, cooks, freezes, and then vanishes. Once I saw her wallet when she was looking to see if she had enough change for the bus, smiling children and smiling adults, a complicated family life. Dad says she walks in on little cat feet, and even when she's around you forget about her, one of those short, still people who eventually kill everyone with gopher poison.

She makes me nervous. I suspect she is quietly disapproving of something about me, who knows what. I fold my dirty clothes, put them in the hamper like clothes in a suitcase, and don't like to leave dirty dishes in the sink, signs that we eat and have lives.

Talking to the policeman had convinced me that I was going to have to straighten out my life. That's all I had to do. Just a little mental housekeeping, that's all.

I would start with a little real, hands-on housekeeping, cleaning up my room. It was wonderful to have something to do, dirty socks to bunch up, old magazines to put in a pile.

I was cleaning up, picking up the book about the mustard gas and the guy going back home, saying hello to people in his neighborhood, hearing them say hello back in a strained way. Sometimes you can only tell that you have something really wrong with you by how your friends act. I would hate to be blind.

I was getting two pimples at the corner of my mouth, a mother pimple and a baby. I kept looking into the mirror and hating my bad luck, but there they were. I dabbed some flesh-colored concealer on them, but that made them look even worse.

I was folding up my fuchsia jogging outfit, thinking I should get one in some other shade, not red, because it fades so fast. I felt something in one of the deep pockets.

My hand slipped into the pocket and came out with something hard and gleaming, a blue object with painted-on eyes. At another time the thing would have looked cute. The thing did not belong here, trespassing in my room.

It was true that I had no memory of hiding it in my pocket. But I knew exactly how it had found itself there, and why it was in my hand at that moment. It was a part of Maureen's father's collection of exotic art.

The ceramic frog did not warm in my hand, the way so many things do, picking up body heat. It stayed cold.

16

I sat in my room, a figurine safe in a big doll's house.

I arrayed my Tuscan tabac eye shadow and my Amalfi sunrise overblush and the long blue Princess Borghese eye accent pencil, and touched up my face, working carefully, thinking about Stu and the way he would feel me all over, inside and out, and it was like I was the clothes and he was the human, trying me on for size. I kept screwing up, one eye looking like Elizabeth Taylor in
Cleopatra
.

I put my hand into my ballet slippers, and there it was, the blue frog with its fake eyes. In real life the hunters kill the frogs, dry the skins, and season their arrowheads with the frog powder.

Right now Mother and Adler were probably in a rented car, air-conditioned, although they probably didn't need it. They would be arriving late at the hotel, probably, their room waiting, with maybe an ice bucket of Mother's favorite champagne, Mumm, the French kind, not the kind from Napa.