Mendocino and Other Stories Read online

  Sarah smiles at him. “When he wants to.”

  Winch feels the tension wires that run between Luke and Sarah start to jangle. He goes over to the stove and looks at the spaghetti sauce. “This smells good,” he says.

  When he turns back, Luke's smiling strangely at Sarah. “Well?” Luke says.

  “What?” she says.

  “What'd I forget?”

  “Did you forget something?”

  “Isn't that what you meant?”

  “By what?”

  “What you just said.”

  Sarah turns to Winch. “Did I say something? I don't remember saying anything. But then, I'm not the one with the memory.”

  Winch attempts a peacemaking smile. What's he supposed to say? Luke faces him. “Women,” Luke says, “have this uncanny way of making you feel ever so slightly insane. Keep that in mind, son, and you'll be OK.”

  Winch swallows uncomfortably. “So do you think maybe we should start the water boiling for the noodles?” he says. Then he remembers the thing he did today, the great idea he had. “Hey,” he says. “I bought you guys some wine.”

  He goes into the living room to get it, and when he comes back something's changed. They're in precisely the same places they were, but the tension wires have, miraculously, gone slack.

  Winch holds up the bottle. “Are you guys into red?” he says.

  SARAH'S TOO TIRED to talk. Sitting at the table, playing with her pasta, she tries in a desultory way to get a fix on the conversation. They're talking about drugs, though—tripping on some camping trip they took together—and the only things she can think of adding are in the teacher mode: Weren't you afraid that you might get separated? How could you have forgotten sweaters?

  Or is that the mother mode?

  At school today, the kids who'd had a brother or sister born in the last year—a remarkable twelve out of twenty-seven—brought in updated information for the New Baby at Home chart, an element of the Family Life unit that worries Sarah: what do you do when someone comes in with the news that little Susie died in her crib? The kids love the chart, though, and as Nan Mikelberg, the other second-grade teacher, has said, if it involves thumbtacks and a bulletin board, go for it. Sarah was helping Merry Clark pin up a new photograph of her baby brother when Merry said, “Mrs. Prinden”—they always call her Mrs., there's nothing she can do about it—“Mrs. Prinden, how come you don't have a baby?” and Josh Gold, who lives across the street from Sarah and Luke, said, “It's 'cause her husband's not really her husband.” What Sarah finally managed to find at the bottom of his confusion was the fact that she and Luke don't have the same last name. But she wonders whether Josh wasn't, in his childish way, right. Did she and Luke forfeit something, living together all those years? It sometimes seems that the primary effect of actually getting married was to make the things that used to be annoying about the other person enraging now: you feel like you'll be voicing or stifling the same complaints for the rest of your life.

  Sarah closes her eyes, and when she opens them Winch is saying, “Maybe we should get some acid for next weekend.” Sarah turns to Luke, her mouth open. He wouldn't, would he?

  “GOD,” LUKE SAYS. “Relax. You look like we're thinking about robbing a bank.”

  Sarah shrugs. “Do what you want,” she says.

  Luke hates this. He wishes she'd just say what she's thinking—that it would really bother her. What bothers him is her just sitting there pretending not to be bothered.

  Not that he has any intention of doing acid—with Winch, with anyone—ever again. Getting high now and then is one thing, but he's fried his brain enough, thank you very much.

  He looks at Sarah. Poor, worried thing. It's funny how the very moment when he's most pissed off it can all just dissolve and leave behind nothing but tenderness. He leans across the table and touches her hand. “I don't want to,” he says, smiling. “OK?”

  “Whoa,” says Winch. “I didn't mean to rock the boat here. Just a little nostalgia kicking in.”

  Luke sings, “We were so much younger then, we're older than that now.”

  “You guys are older,” says Winch. “Maybe that's my problem.”

  Sarah turns to him—an eager, intimate look on her face. “What do you mean?”

  Luke's not in the mood. He stands up. “I'll clear,” he says. “Winch, honey, it's your turn to wash.”

  WINCH FEELS TERRIBLE. He's so stupid! Sarah was always like this about drugs, which is fine, it's her choice—her loss, in his opinion. But he should have known better. Years ago when she'd come to visit Luke at school, Luke would always give Winch his stash for safekeeping, so Sarah wouldn't come across it and be bummed. In those days Luke called her The Schoolmarm—to her face, too; he didn't say it to be mean or anything—and even now Winch thinks it's kind of funny that that's what she ended up being. He'd love to go to work with her one of these days, sit in on her class, but he's already asked and she's already said no.

  “Winch, please,” she says now. “It's not a big deal. Don't look so hangdog.”

  He shrugs. “I guess I just have a knack for saying the wrong thing.” This is such a pathetic thing to say, he can't believe the words came out of his mouth.

  She stands up. “Shall we?”

  He knows he should get up, go in and do the dishes. He watches as Sarah gathers up the empty wineglasses; he likes the way she holds them, stems between her fingers, the three bowls just touching each other in her outstretched palm. She picks up the salad bowl with her free hand and turns toward the kitchen, her skirt twisting around her legs for a moment.

  “Sarah,” he says, but when she turns back he's suddenly embarrassed, doesn't want to say what he was going to say—that he likes her skirt, thinks it looks good on her. “Here,” he says, reaching for the salad bowl. “I'll take that.”

  SARAH WIPES UP spaghetti sauce spills on the stove while Winch washes and Luke dries. She wishes she hadn't reacted about the acid. Would it be so awful if they did it? Not really—not if she didn't have to be around them. She never wanted to be so conventional; it's crept up on her, all the more insidious because it's so surprising. After she straightened out Josh Gold's misunderstanding this morning, she found herself thinking that maybe she should have changed her name. Sarah Merrill, though—it sounds like a game show hostess.

  She turns from the stove and watches Luke and Winch. It's funny how, just looking at them from the back—both of them in jeans, both with fairly short hair—you can tell that Luke's the one with a job and Winch is the drifter. Sarah thinks that Winch would be shocked if he found out about the time she dropped acid. Luke's the only one who knows, though: Luke and her sister, who was there—who made her do it, Sarah's always thought.

  Then suddenly Sarah realizes that she's been unfair, blaming Becky. Thinking back now, for the first time in years, the whole episode shifts, as if she were looking through a kaleidoscope and had just realized you could turn the end and get an entirely new view. Sarah was fourteen, Becky barely sixteen: where was it written that Sarah had to accept Becky's offer? She could have done what she'd planned that day, gone to the beach with her friends. She sees now that Becky must have been scared—must have given Sarah the second black pill because she wanted Sarah's company, not to test her. And when they walked home from the park late that afternoon, and Becky took Sarah's hand—couldn't that have been for her own comfort? Remembering that endless walk home, Sarah has always connected the terrible feeling of there being fur growing on her shoulders, of her lips being grotesquely swollen and her eyelids puffy, with the shameful notion that her sister was holding her hand because otherwise Sarah might never find her way home.

  “SARAH,” LUKE SAYS for the third time, and finally she looks at him.

  “You were a million miles away,” says Winch, and Luke wishes to hell he were alone with his wife. It takes the greatest effort to stay where he is, holding the damned dishtowel, to not cross the kitchen and put his arms around her.

 
; “Are you OK?” Luke says. He puts down the dishtowel and does cross the kitchen, but settles for touching her shoulder.

  She appears to be on the verge of tears and although she nods, he feels a kind of panic start up through his legs. He thinks it must be about the acid and he says, “You know what I was thinking we should do next weekend?”

  Sarah doesn't respond and Luke turns to Winch; he just wants someone to say “What, Luke?” But Winch has gone goony; his mouth half-open, he stares at Sarah.

  “I was thinking,” says Luke—but he wasn't thinking anything. “I was thinking we should all go to the zoo.”

  Too late he remembers that Sarah hates zoos—they make her self-conscious, she says, as if she were in the cage with the animals watching her. But she smiles and says, “That might be fun,” and Luke's so relieved he just lets it go.

  “Oh, man,” says Winch, “they've got a great zoo here. I was there a couple days ago, they have a very cool panda at that zoo. I'll bet you guys have never even been, have you? That's an excellent idea.”

  Luke allows himself to wonder what Winch was doing at the zoo when he's supposed to be looking for a job. Maybe he was looking for a job. Monkey feeder, shit raker, bird man: so many possibilities.

  “You know what's weird about pandas,” Sarah says. Luke looks at her. She's smiling—she's got something up her sleeve.

  “They don't breed in captivity,” Winch says. “I, for one, can't really blame them.”

  Sarah shakes her head. “No, listen,” she says. “They're huge, right? Get this: it's not unusual for them to give birth to babies the size of a stick of butter.”

  “I think I'm disgusted,” says Luke.

  Winch goes to the refrigerator, gets out a stick of butter, and comes over to where Luke and Sarah are standing.

  “I don't believe this,” Luke says, glancing at Sarah.

  Winch takes Luke's hand and puts the butter in it. “I think you should be ashamed,” Winch says. “The animal kingdom is a beautiful part of our world. Who are we to judge its mysterious ways?”

  Luke laughs uncomfortably.

  “Pet the baby,” says Winch.

  Luke looks at Sarah and rolls his eyes.

  “Pet it,” says Winch. He says it again, and Luke strokes his finger over the waxy paper. It's pleasantly cool and firm.

  WINCH ISN'T SURE what just happened between Luke and Sarah. She's better, right? It's exhausting, this going back and forth.

  “Satisfied?” Luke asks him, making his snorting sound.

  Winch takes the butter and taps Luke's shoulder with it. “You sound like a hog, brother,” he says. He returns the butter to the refrigerator. When he turns back Luke's staring at him. “What?” Winch says.

  “What did you just say?”

  Winch tries the snort himself.

  Luke turns to look at Sarah, but she's staring at Winch, a disgusted look on her face. Is she disgusted with Winch or with Luke? He didn't mean anything by it—the snort just bugs him.

  “You've got this noise you make, man.” He does the noise again himself. “Like that.”

  “He's laughing,” Sarah says coldly. She continues to stare at him.

  “Well,” Winch says, “nice laugh.” He feels very peculiar just now—almost as if he were high, only decidedly unrelaxed.

  “Well,” Sarah says, “we're sorry it bothers you. Is there anything else we can do to make your stay more pleasant? Change the way we cook your dinner, maybe, or how we—”

  “Sarah,” Luke says, putting his hand on her arm.

  She pulls her arm away and leaves the kitchen.

  Luke stares at Winch.

  “Oops,” Winch says.

  “Oops?” Luke says. “You say oops?”

  Winch doesn't know what to say.

  SARAH'S IN THE bathroom, door closed, running cold water into the sink for no good reason. She feels reckless, like breaking something—hurling something heavy and expensive through the big living room window. At the same time, she knows that she is someone who could never do something like that. She'd be unable to stop herself from thinking beyond the exhilarating crash to the broken glass on the floor, the room sucking in the cold autumn wind, the repairmen summoned.

  There's a knock at the door, and Luke's voice asking her what she's doing.

  She reaches into the tub and turns on the hot water. “Taking a bath,” she says.

  “What?” he calls.

  She opens the door a crack. “I'm taking a bath,” she says, and closes the door before he can respond.

  She's not someone who takes baths, and the tub is not exactly clean, but she finds an old envelope of rose-scented bath salts, puts the rubber disk over the drain, and takes off her clothes.

  LUKE FINDS WINCH in the living room, his tall frame folded into a low, narrow chair, his elbows held awkwardly at his sides. Luke sits on the couch and with the remote switches on the TV. Someone has turned the volume all the way down, and the football game on the screen seems absurd without the attendant noise—strange green shapes trying to knock over strange white shapes. When he reaches forward to put the remote back on the coffee table, he sees Winch's key right where he left it last night—in the little bowl. Luke fishes the key out and holds it up. “Look familiar?” he says.

  Winch nods. “I forgot it this morning.”

  “I heard.” Luke puts the key on the table and slides it toward Winch, but with too much force; the key goes off the table and lands near Winch's foot.

  Winch doesn't move for a minute, and Luke's about to reach over and pick it up himself when Winch says, “Maybe you should keep it.” He picks up the key and tosses it to Luke.

  It's what he's been wanting, but Luke doesn't feel the relief he expected. Instead, he's worried—honestly worried—about what on earth will become of this man. Watching Winch sitting there in the too-small chair, Luke finds himself thinking back to the summer after their junior year, when he and Winch house-sat for Winch's advisor in the English department. Luke had been nervous about accepting Winch's offer of a free place to stay—he saw himself following Winch around, picking up towels and abandoned sandwich halves, putting coasters under Winch's beer bottles. But Winch was so excruciatingly fastidious that Luke took to leaving his own bed unmade, to waiting a day or two to wash dishes, just to keep some balance in the house. By the end of the summer Luke was wondering whether Winch had decided to abandon his direction—or his lack thereof—to become, after all, the thing his parents wanted him to be: someone who wouldn't be ashamed to call himself by his given name, Lewis Winchell, Jr.; someone who would take the trouble to graduate with honors; someone who would throw away his half-finished, waterlogged copies of Dickens and Hardy, and move back to Buffalo, and get a respectable job.

  Looking at Winch, Luke wonders, not for the first time, what it's cost his friend to go on rebelling long past the point where the rebelled against could possibly give a damn.

  IN HIS MIND, Winch is drawing a map of the Midwest. He lived in the Twin Cities for eight or nine months once, but for the life of him he can't figure out what's on the other side of Minnesota. Montana and Wyoming and Nebraska, but in what configuration? He's thinking west might be a good direction, with winter approaching: he likes the cold. Hitching, he could probably make it to Minneapolis in a day or two, and he's pretty sure some of the people he knew there would put him up for a while. And then—the Dakotas! That's what's west of Minnesota. After Minneapolis he could head for South Dakota. It's not something he would tell anyone, but he's always longed to see Mt. Rushmore.

  He looks at Luke, who's looking at him. “Got to keep rolling,” he says.

  “Listen,” says Luke, “you don't have to be in any hurry to leave.” He leans forward, fiddling with the key. “Tonight was just, you know, weird. But if you're on to something job-wise, or if you think Madison's the place for you and you want to work on getting set up here …” His voice trails off and he shrugs.

  “I don't know,” Winch says. />
  “In fact,” Luke says, “I know this'll sound strange, but did you ever think of working at a zoo? I was thinking before—I mean, don't you kind of like animals?”

  “They're OK,” Winch says. He stands up and stretches. It's funny—but sad, too—that Luke of all people would suggest this. Working at the zoo! It's the kind of last-ditch idea people give you when they try to put themselves in your position and can't bear the desperation they feel. One thing Winch can say is that he's never felt desperate. Not ever.

  SARAH LEAVES HER clothes on a chair in the bedroom and, in her bathrobe, heads toward the front of the house. She feels like a little girl going to say good night to the grown-ups. Then she thinks of Winch saying “You guys are older—maybe that's my problem” and she wonders whether it can be said that any of them are, after all, grown-ups. She and Luke are just doing a better job of pretending.

  Winch is squatting next to his backpack, looking through an outside pocket. Luke gives her a look she can't quite read: some-thing's up.

  “Taking a bath is kind of nice,” she says. She sits next to Luke on the couch.

  He leans over. “You smell good,” he says. “Sort of like carrot cake.”

  “Luke.” She gives him a friendly push. “Wild rose bath salts.”

  “They obviously marked it wrong at the factory.” He takes her hand and holds it in his lap.

  Winch stands up, a tiny red book in his hand. “What's that?” she says, smiling at him.

  He won't meet her eye. “My bible.”

  “His address book,” Luke says. “Winch is thinking about moving on.”

  Sarah looks back at Winch. He holds the address book in his palm and tosses it up just far enough so it can flip over before he catches it again. She moves to stand up, but Luke still has her hand and won't let go. “Winch, you're really welcome to stay,” she says. “I apologize for what I said. I—I had a bad day.”

  He tosses the book again, and again. “Well, I'm thinking I might go back to Minneapolis.”

  Sarah looks at Luke, who shrugs. “Not right away?” she says. “Not tomorrow?”