Mendocino and Other Stories Read online

  I looked at Bobby and he was biting his lip. He smiled quickly and stood up.

  “Maybe I could help you buy your socks,” I said. “I mean, I'm sure you don't need help, but maybe I could go with you.”

  “Actually,” he said, “I do need help. I can never decide on colors. Red and yellow or blue and green.”

  “You wear red socks?”

  “No, no,” he said, laughing, “the bands on top. I need tube socks. For practice.” He dribbled an imaginary basketball, then shot it into the sky.

  “WOULD YOU LIKE to go to a movie tonight?” my mother said at dinner that evening. I'd been back and forth to the shopping center until the middle of the afternoon—I'd finally found some gloves at Peaches and Cream—and since I'd gotten home she and I had been distant and polite when we'd seen each other, as if we were strangers whose paths kept crossing in some foreign city.

  “No, thank you,” I said. “I've got to spend some time on things that are beneath me.”

  She colored, and Danny looked down at his plate. “I'm sorry, honey,” she said. “I didn't mean it, it was a dumb thing to say. I just don't want you to be disappointed.”

  “When I don't make it?” I asked, standing up to clear the table.

  Danny all but leapt from his chair and hurried from the room.

  “Oh,” my mother said quietly, and covered her mouth with her hand. She shook her head, and I could see she was fighting tears. After a moment she turned and faced the door, following Danny's path with her eyes. “Should I—”

  I went over to her and held her head to my chest. “He's OK,” I said. “I think we should just leave him alone.”

  “The old laissez-faire attitude was never my strong suit,” she said. The vibrations her jaw made against my stomach as she spoke felt strange. She sighed and put her hands on my hips and I moved away. She looked up at me. “Show us your dance, honey,” she said. “I think it would mean a lot to Danny.”

  I nodded. Dance, I thought.

  “And to me, too, of course.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  BUT THE NEXT day, a Sunday, Danny had been invited by a friend's family to go to San Francisco, and it wasn't until Monday night, just two days before tryouts, that I allowed my mother and Danny into the basement to watch me run through my routine.

  “OK,” I said when we got downstairs, “I'm going to pretend you guys are the judges.”

  Danny had perched on the washing machine. My mother leaned against the dryer. “How many are there?” she said uneasily.

  “Six,” I said. There would be Mrs. Donovan; Coach Simpson; Sally Chin, the head pompon girl for the football season; two guys from the basketball team; and Miss Rosenthal, a Home Ec teacher—my Home Ec teacher, as it happened, and it was she who worried me most. We had somehow, already, not hit it off; the other girls in the class were already on their A-line skirts, but I just couldn't finish my pot holder. I was afraid she would take it out on me in the judging.

  “Six?” my mother said.

  “The competition is going to be tough,” Danny said. “We've got some very critical judges, ladies and gentlemen, and only five of these fifty beautiful young ladies will be selected. Sam, tell us a little about how the competition works.”

  “Fifty!” my mother said.

  “He's joking, Mom. It's twenty-two.”

  “Oh, that's not so bad,” my mother said. “Five out of twenty-two.” But she looked unhappy.

  “And now, from our own Manzanita Drive, it's Elizabeth Earle,” Danny shouted.

  “Quiet,” my mother said, elbowing him.

  I winked at Danny and turned to start the music. I stood with my back to them, my hands at my waist, my right knee bent. Then, on cue, I whipped around and started the routine.

  It was the first time I had done it in front of anyone, and the thing I was most conscious of was the fact that I could not keep a smile on my face: Smile, I would tell myself, and my lips would slide open, and I would think about the kick I was doing (was my knee straight? were my toes pointed?) and I would realize my mouth was twisted into a tight knot again.

  I finished with the splits, my arms upstretched in a V for Victory.

  “Yes,” Danny cried, leaping off the washing machine. He highfived me and ran up the stairs to the kitchen.

  My mother smiled at me. “Very nice,” she said.

  I sighed and turned around.

  “Really, honey,” she said. “It's good—you got all the way down on your splits. I'll bet most of the other girls can't do that.”

  Danny came running back down the stairs, waving a piece of paper on which he'd written “9.9” with a thick pen. “An amazing routine from Elizabeth Earle,” he cried.

  “Thanks, Dan.” I looked at my mother. “Well, it'll all be over in two days.”

  “Who knows?” she said. “Maybe it'll just be beginning.”

  They went upstairs while I took the record off the turntable and put it back in its paper sleeve. I wiped my sweaty palms off on my shorts—I'd decided not to wear the gloves for practicing, to keep them clean—then I turned the basement light off and climbed the stairs.

  My mother and Bobby were sitting at the kitchen table. When my mother saw me she said, “Elizabeth's got her tryouts day after tomorrow.”

  Bobby looked at me. “Nervous?”

  I nodded.

  “Twenty-two girls are trying out for five spots,” my mother said.

  “OK, Mom.” I looked at Bobby's feet. “Are you wearing your new socks?”

  He pulled up one leg of his jeans to display the bright red and yellow bands around the top of his sock. “Listen,” he said, “try not to be too nervous. It'll show, and that'll be the thing that gets you. Know what I mean?” He turned to my mother. “They totally watch for whether the girl has the right look. You know, smiley, bouncy. Believe me, I was once a judge for one of these things.”

  “Maybe you should do your routine for Bobby,” my mother said.

  “Absolutely not.” His words had sent my heartbeat out of control. Eye shadow and lip gloss, I thought, like it or not.

  “Please?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Well, just remember,” he said. “You've got to smile.”

  I felt my face fill with color.

  My mother coughed and said, “You know, honey, you did look a little fierce down there.”

  I gave them a frozen grin. “Like this?” I said through clenched teeth.

  “That's the one,” Bobby said. “Glue it on.”

  “Good night,” I said. Without looking at either of them, I got myself a glass of water and climbed the stairs.

  “Elizabeth?” Danny called from his room.

  I stopped in his doorway. He was lying on his bed, our giant world atlas open in front of him. “Planning a trip?” I asked. I sat down next to him and glanced at the atlas; it was open to a page showing the whole of Africa. “They say Morocco is nice this time of year.”

  “It was good,” he said. “I'm sure you'll make it.”

  I shrugged. “Not according to Mr. Basketball down there.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing. I can just tell. He thinks I'm not pretty enough.”

  “God,” Danny said. “He does not. You are so puerile sometimes.”

  “Puerile?” I laughed and reached over to tickle his neck. “Little Mr. Vocabulary.”

  “Don't call me little.” He scrambled off the bed and assumed a bodybuilder's stance. Then he put his hands on his hips and began mimicking my pompon kicks. “Do they have pompon girls in Morocco?”

  “Danny!”

  He started wiggling around, his arms snaking out from his sides. “I'm a Moroccan pompon girl,” he said. “Elizabethahad Earlakim.”

  “Danny,” I said. “Stop, tell me the truth. Did I look fierce?”

  OF COURSE I didn't make it. Ten or twelve years later, at parties, I would offer up the comic spectacle of myself standing in the girls' gy
m, my back to the judges, my eyelids powder blue, my white-gloved hands clenched into fists, my right knee bent: my hopeful, embarrassed self waiting for the music to start. I would say that as I slid down into the splits at the end, my arms in their V, I caught Miss Rosenthal's eye and mistook her horsey grin for congratulations on a job well done, when in fact she was trying to get me to smile. I would perhaps also say—although this wasn't true, I was far too nervous for such fancies—that as I stood in the locker room changing out of my gymsuit, I had a triumphant vision of myself on the floor of the basketball court at halftime, facing the crowded bleachers in my crimson and gold dress, and that I felt a thrill of fear at the idea of doing something so marvelously alien. I would say, in closing, that I was lucky: no one could admit to actually having been a pompon girl. The cachet was in having wanted to, and failed.

  Here's what I never said: After the list was posted I telephoned my mother to come pick me up; it was nearly six o'clock and the afternoon light was fading. I was sitting on the curb in the parking lot hoping that Bobby wouldn't be around when I got home, when the memory of my mother's voice came to me. “Your father would—” it said. Your father would, your father would … And I was filled with sickness because I realized that she might have been wrong. Wouldn't he, after all, have been on my side? What would he have thought? Well lucky for me he isn't here to see it.

  A LITTLE WHILE later my mother arrived; neither of us spoke on the way home.

  As we turned into our street, I saw that Danny and Bobby were outside the house, shooting baskets. “No,” I said, turning to her. “Oh, please.”

  “What?” She put her foot on the brake.

  “I can't face him right now. Can't we go to the store or something?”

  “You look fine, honey.”

  “Mom,” I said. “It's not how I look. He'll think I'm such a loser. He'll try to get me to play basketball. Please.”

  She steered the car to the curb and cut the engine. She turned to face me. “You don't get it, do you?” she said. “He doesn't think you're a loser. He's scared of you.”

  “Bobby?”

  “Terrified. You're what's standing between him and a place to live. Next week his month is up, and if we say he can't stay he's in big trouble. He's scared you want him out.”

  My mouth fell open. “He told you this?”

  “Elizabeth,” she said. “Believe me. No, he didn't tell me, but I know. You can be—formidable.”

  I looked out the window at our house. Dusk was coming on quickly now, but still they played. I watched Danny make three baskets in a row. Then Bobby took the ball, backed up to the foot of the driveway, and drove in for a layup. “That was a good shot,” I said. I turned back to my mother.

  She had picked up my gloves, which I'd thrown onto the seat between us, and was pulling them on. She held her hands up in front of her face and looked at them. Then she reached out and ran her finger down my cheek, a soft, velvety touch. “I'm sorry you didn't win,” she said.

  I sat without speaking for a while. Then I took her hand and pulled at the fingertip of the glove. “What am I going to do with these?”

  “I know of this shoebox,” she said. She smiled at me; then she started the car and drove the last hundred yards to our house.

  When they saw us, Danny and Bobby stopped playing. I got out of the car, and for a moment neither of them said anything. Then Bobby said, “I'm sorry, Elizabeth—it's too bad.” He brushed the hair off his forehead and I could see he was trying to think of something to add.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Danny bounced the basketball a couple of times. Without quite looking at me he said, “We could play one game of HORSE before dinner.”

  “I'm kind of tired, Dan.”

  He bounced the ball again.

  “We could just play GOAT,” Bobby said. “That would be quicker.”

  “Or DOG,” Danny said, smiling.

  I set my books on the trunk of the car. “Jeez, guys—I'm not in a hurry. Let's play RHINOCEROS.”

  “All right,” Danny said, jumping up and down. “You'll play.”

  I looked at Bobby and we exchanged an amused smile.

  “I know,” Danny went on. “I have a great idea. Let's play ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM.”

  “What?” Bobby said.

  “Antidisestablishmentarianism,” Danny said. “It's the longest word in the English language.”

  That was something he'd gotten from our father. As a game at dinner we used to have these sort of spelling bees, and Danny always insisted that the longer a word was, the harder it would be to spell; our father gave him “antidisestablishmentarianism” once to show that he was wrong.

  “Danny,” I said, “spell ‘puerile.’ ”

  “Hold on, you two,” said Bobby. “I think it has to be an animal.”

  THOMAS PICKED OUR house because of the view, but there is something cruel in it to me: the sliding glass doors, the redwood deck, that sudden plunge of green; you could die falling out of our view. We live on a steep hill about an hour's drive south of San Francisco, and way below us, in the muted colors of a lovely old rug, is a sweep of neighborhoods and highways and trees that reaches all the way to the silver strand of the Bay. We have floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides, pristine white walls, and exposed beams, and there are rugs for warmth and a big, open fireplace. But it's a chilling house to live in. A man killed himself here.

  IT'S SEVEN O'CLOCK and Thomas is up and gone. He's working very hard these first few months; he says he'll cut back a little once he gets his footing. This is something of a pun: his new job is to manage the finances of a company called ColoRun, which is about to introduce into the marketplace a revolutionary new running shoe.

  I'm smoothing the bedspread over our bed when I hear Jenny calling for me. Her room is on the side of the house and looks onto a small clearing; most mornings I find her standing in her crib, looking out the window at one of the small delights of our life here: a rabbit trembling in the wet grass, a deer moving along the edge of the woods. Today, though, she's still lying down.

  “Mommy,” she says, reaching for me. “Up.”

  I lift her as if she's still a baby and that dependent on me; in fact, she just turned two.

  “Eskimo kiss me,” she says, butting at me with her nose. When I lean toward her, though, she wriggles loose and starts to sing a little song she made up a few days ago: “Mommy, Mommy. Mommy and Tommy. Tommy, Tommy. Tommy and Mommy.” Although I've never told her to and I'm sure she doesn't yet understand that he isn't her father, she has always called Thomas Thomas. Now there's a little boy down the street named Tommy, and this coincidence has been a source of intrigue and delight to her.

  “Thomas went to work,” I say. I go to her dresser and pull open a drawer. “What are you going to wear today, Jenny?” Without hesitation she comes over and reaches for her yellow overalls. It amazes me, how clearly she knows what she wants.

  In the kitchen, I settle her into her high chair, then slice a banana onto her tray. “Breakfast,” I say.

  I pour myself a cup of coffee and when I see that she's eating contentedly, I wander out of the kitchen and through the living room, to the doorway of Thomas's study. At some point every morning I seem to end up at this spot, staring at the magazines and papers on his desk, looking for last night's old-fashioned glass or tea mug and hoping to learn from these artifacts how he is doing, to discover just who it is I have married.

  I'm standing at the door eyeing a yellow pad on which he has scribbled half a page of notes, when suddenly the feeling comes over me—like the floor has vanished from beneath my feet and I am falling.

  Where? How?

  I wheel around, expecting a vision, an answer.

  Did his wife find him?

  My heart is beating too fast. I try to fix my concentration on the sliding glass door that leads to the deck: through the glass I can see that the early-morning fog is thinning and the sky is turning a watery shade of blu
e.

  Thomas tried to joke me out of it at first. “In the billiard room with a lead pipe,” he would say when I brought it up. “Colonel Mustard in the hall with a revolver.” I'd laugh, but I would never be able to stop myself from reminding him—as if he didn't know it all too well—that we knew who did it. Not Colonel Mustard, not Miss Scarlett, but a man of our time. A man defined to us by an act that must have undefined him to everyone who thought they knew him. We have lived in his house for seven weeks now. We have been married for sixteen.

  “Mommy,” Jenny calls from the kitchen. “Mommy!”

  “I'm coming,” I call back. You'll never know, I tell myself. It's not something you'll ever know.

  JENNY'S FATHER DIDN'T want to be her father, or perhaps it was my husband he didn't want to be; I told him about her at a Chinese restaurant in the college town neither of us had managed yet to leave, and he lowered his forehead into his palms and shook his head. His face was as crimson as if I had shouted at him, or he at me, but for the longest time he didn't say a word. Finally he called the waitress over and asked for the check; she had to make room for it among the plates of untouched food. It was anchored on its little tray by two fortune cookies, and I thought, He won't open his, and he didn't.

  I went home to have the baby and ended up staying for well over a year; I began to feel guilty, but every time I suggested that I should get a job, that Jenny and I should move into our own place, my parents would get twin hurt looks on their faces and my mother would say, “But Claire, we're your parents,” and my father would say, “We want to help you,” and then together, in their uncanny unison, “It's our pleasure to have you here.” And I know it was. But somehow—perhaps because I'm their only child, born when they were both nearly forty—although they've always made me feel loved, I've never quite felt a part of them; they've got those twelve years of history on me. When my mother's sister invited me and Jenny to use her apartment in Rome for a month, I think we were all relieved.