Bright Before Us (7 page)

 

You came back in pajamas, startling at the sight of me.

Thought I'd tackle these dishes,
I said.

Francis,
you said, looking around the clean living room.
You didn't have to—

You gave me a sleepy grin and walked into the kitchen to the refrigerator.
I can offer you rotting casserole, rotting lasagna, rotting cold cuts ...
You groaned softly.
All of this is gonna go bad.

A knock came and you went to greet the lawyer, letting him shake your limp hand before you both sat in the dark. I lingered in the living room, standing helplessly. You curled your feet under you on the couch, and we caught a glimpse of each other. I smiled. You smiled back and I understood: all I had needed to do—all you had wanted me to do—was stay.

I left the room to wash the dishes and give you some privacy. He talked for a while, and over the water from the tap, I heard your answers.
I can't,
you said.

I turned off the water and began pretending to dry.

Both. Either. Selling it or living here,
you said.

There was a pause.

I don't have a boyfriend,
you said.

Another pause.

And renting it ... just, the idea of somebody else living here ...
You sat up.
Aren't there costs people have to pay when they own a house, even if they don't have a mortgage? Special taxes, or something? You'll have to explain this to me like I'm six years old, because I don't know anything.
Your voice broke.
My dad does my taxes, I don't even—

The lawyer cleared his throat.
Ms. Lucas,
he began, lowering his voice,
your parents have bequeathed you a significant amount of money.
If this produced a reaction in you, you said nothing to indicate it. A beat passed, his voice returning to normal volume.
You need to understand that ownership means there's no landlord to call when a pipe bursts, or the toilet overflows, or whatever else.

Okay,
you said.

He gave you his card. It was hard to hear what he said before leaving, but I could guess.
I'm sorry for your loss. Let me know if you need anything. Take care.

 

I came out and we sat by the window, watching the lawyer's car wiggle tediously from a tight parking space, creeping to and fro in a sad, eight-point maneuver. Your face was lit by the weak sunlight as you said,
I don't know what to do.
We watched someone walk down the street, shouting over his shoulder at no one.

You don't have to decide today. Sleep on it. You've barely slept.
My voice took on a pleading quality that surprised me.
Go take a nap. I'll get us some lunch.

I can't live here,
you said.
Sleep in my old bed, like they're just down the hall?
You motioned toward the things in the room.
Look at all this stuff.

I knew you were wondering how to even begin. How much strength would you have to muster to empty their closets, pile their toiletries into garbage bags, cancel their magazine subscriptions? Your dad's golf clubs were propped against the wall in the foyer, mud from the course on the bag's metal stand. Your mom's cooking was still wrapped in foil in the rapidly warming fridge. Their fish swam placidly in the illuminated aquarium. Mail would come, the envelopes flitting through the slot in the door like dispensed candy. And it would all be up to you to deal with—only you who could see to these things.

Get me out of here,
you said. You stood, grabbed my car keys, and held them out like an offering. We both looked at them, like they might answer for me.

You ran upstairs to change into some of the ill-fitting old clothes from high school that remained in your dresser drawers. Any suggestion that you wanted me to leave was abandoned. You had no destination in mind. Neither did I.

 

But in the car you decided where we should go. At Fort Point, the structure beneath the bridge's webbed underarch, there were tours you could take, and at the end they fired the old cannon. We both remembered the sound it made from our fourth-grade field trip there. I could still see the arc of the cannonball going into the water; I said so and you said you could too. Our class had run circles around the musty cots, spitting over the ledge into the bay. When
the cannon went off we all jumped. After, our teacher walked us across the bridge—it was how field trips always ended in elementary school. You walk and walk through the German and Japanese tourists, irritated joggers and cyclists, and then by midspan everyone remembers how long the bridge really is and so you look out at the jutting city's plump hills and sunlit steel, the bobbing boats in the marina, the blinking drone of the Alcatraz lighthouse, the pubic foliage surrounding Coit Tower. And then, because you're cold no matter the season, and tired, and everyone else wants to, you walk back to the bus, defeated.

Seeing the fort again was one of those things we talked about doing but never did. But then there we were. The parking lot's edge was a jetty of sharp, stacked rocks, and beyond them men in wet suits drifted in shadow, prone on their neon boards. The water frothed beneath them. We looked for dorsal fins. You wondered about the pile of cannonballs accumulated on the ocean floor.
One day,
you said,
they'll shoot one off and it'll land at the top of the pyramid, it'll nose right out of the water.
Your voice was hoarse, your eyes drooped—you were worn down but excited.
Imagine all the whales they've beaned,
you said. I put the car in park as you shoved your purse under the passenger seat.

I'll get the admission,
I said.

Francis,
you said,
it's free.

The power still wasn't on in that part of the city, and it felt as though we had been plunged back in time. The tour was going on as usual, except the dark corridors of the barracks were shut off to visitors. We met up with the crowd, following the guide through the gray chill as he
quizzed us on Civil War battlefields and sneezed into a stained handkerchief. It was evidently still a popular fieldtrip destination—names were tagged in correction fluid on the outer walls, an occasional knife intaglio set into the wooden door frames.
This is boring,
you whispered. One of the Golden Gate's pillars loomed nearby, like a massive foot that had just missed us. We looked at the sun and pretended to be warm.
Get to the cannon already,
you said to no one. The air smelled like rot and salt, and I dug my nose into my sweatshirt to see if that was how I would smell once we left.

When the tour was almost over, everyone gathered around the cannon, the guide clearly getting excited. Dressed in his Union garb, he began his practiced speech. We could see the belly of the bridge, could hear the sustained rumble of the cars. Everything was covered in white bird shit, the gulls circling near the bridge's underside.
Ten thousand homeless in this city and I have three bedrooms,
you said. I shoved my hands in my pockets. We were against the fort's ledge, and you threw over a crumpled tissue from your pocket. The wind held it at eye level for a moment and then it dropped.
I don't have enough stuff to fill the one.
People turned around to shush you with their eyes, but you had opened a door to something inside you.
I want to lie in a hammock. I want to do a paint-by-numbers.
You sniffed.
I'm gonna need some pancakes.
You kept going, listing things that wouldn't, in the end, make any of this easier.

We watched the tour guide wipe out the cannon's mouth. It was almost time. I tried to think of anything that wouldn't sound like an empty recitation: Go with your gut, You'll figure it out, Everything will be okay. You
worried your lip with your teeth.
First you swab the bore,
the guide said. Behind us, the open ocean stretched out, as uninterrupted as prairie, the people around us taking pictures of all that horizon.

My dad took me here one time,
you said.

I made sure you saw me listening with my whole face.

At night,
you said.
It was something you could do here.
The cold had brought up the purple veins in your hands.
But we didn't go in.

The guide said,
This is called ‘wadding.'
He balled up a piece of paper and shoved it down the cannon's throat. You watched him with dead eyes.
I remember I wanted to go to Mel's Drive-In after. But I asked if we could and Dad said no.

How old were you?
I asked.

The guide held up the fuse, explaining how far away to stand.

Old enough that I shouldn't have whined about it.
We rubbed our hands together, the sun behind a cloud.
But I did,
you said.
Whine about it, I mean. I whined the whole ride back, and he didn't answer me.
The guide took questions, pointed at people with their hands raised.

I keep having dreams about them, where my mom says something thoughtless.
You swallowed, buying yourself a moment.
And then I wake up angry with her.

I'm sorry,
I said.

This whole thing.
You shook your head, and your face softened.
It was this thing you could do. You walk around the fort with candles. My dad and I got to the parking lot and I cried and said I couldn't go in because it was too dark.
You started to say something else, but this guy next
to us said,
Oh, the candlelight tour? I've heard about that, how is it?

You gave me a look.

Mind your fucking business,
I told him.

Your hand went to your mouth, and, behind it, you finally smiled.

 

As we watched the guide push blackened objects into the cannon, explaining everything in his pinched voice, I thought about the last time I saw your parents. It was New Year's Day, ten months before. You had spent the night at their house, and I came to pick you up the next day. I drove beside the trees on Park Presidio, the jammed-together houses in Easter-egg colors, finally double-parking alongside your mom's car. Your dad came to the window and waved, then disappeared behind the curtain. He came back holding up a bottle of wine, pointing at it with his eyebrows raised. But I didn't want to get stuck there, explaining what I was up to nowadays, fielding questions about my idiot roommate, my little sister, the Giants' prospects this year. When I waved no, your dad batted his hand in my direction, like,
No problem—we'll catch you next time!
I saw him turn and speak, and your mom came to the window. She stuck her tongue out at me and laughed. I laughed too. You had a good mom and dad. When we graduated from high school, they sent me money in a tiny red envelope; when I came over for dinner they made things they knew I liked. One year, they gave me nudie playing cards for Christmas.

You met my parents only a handful of times, mostly at mediocre dinners celebrating my meager accomplishments: graduating junior high, growing one year older.
You were unfailingly polite to them, though I could tell that you regarded them with puzzlement, as though they were of a subtly different species—a boorish genus not yet evolved toward self-awareness. After a birthday lunch of mine one year, standing outside a suburban Red Robin (I don't recall how old I was turning, only that my deepening voice was unreliable during the proceedings), my mother spent ten minutes bitching at herself for lighting up around you, frantically waving away the smoke from her Camel instead of extinguishing it. My father said nothing—not just to you, but to any of us. Until, finally, someone mentioned his recent purchase of a puppy. Dad grunted.
We had a puppy when Frankie was little,
he said.
It got a nasty case of the trots and sprayed shit all over the walls, at a full run, and howled all night.
He spit into the bushes; one of his habits.
Chewed through our plastic kiddie pool, bit a hole in the hose, ate the jack-o'-lantern.
He gave me what was meant to be a playful slap on the back of the head.
And I thought my kids were a pain in the ass.
It was the sort of comment that, coupled with a slight indication of lightness, could almost pass for humor.

You gave him a nervous, school-picture smile, and I felt the sting of envy. Your family didn't do the playful-teasing thing. Nor did they do the not-very-playful-teasing thing. They certainly never got piss-drunk and teary over some old record turned to full volume, bouncing a knee to an ancient guitar solo. And they never slammed their kid against a wall, picture frames rattling and then splintering on the wood floor. You never had to smell, in those moments, for booze on your father's breath—you never had to find it absent and be shaken by that absence, and by what it meant:
no easy answer, no method of prediction. Your parents asked you questions and you were happy to respond. Your parents protected you from the inevitable truth: that they were regular, fallible people. Mine were openly flawed, unapologetically inconsistent. My sister and I gathered, on our own and early on, that no adjustments ought to be expected from their end. And because you saw them only in public, on their best behavior (such as it was), you never knew what it was really like at my house.

Your ignorance only fueled the crush I already had on you. I fostered it all through high school, fiddling with it incessantly like a wound inside the mouth. I admitted it to no one. After a while, my feelings for you and the truth about my parents seemed connected, inextricable. That you knew none of it was a kind of guarantee that of all the reasons you cared for me, none were based in pity. You remained untainted by the dismal truth about me. It was one more reason to love you, among the many.