Calling Home (13 page)

“I still haven't decided about the recital.”

Mr. Farrar chuckled and looked up at the ceiling. “You mean, you haven't decided what to play?”

“I haven't decided that I can do it—at all.”

“After all I've said? After hours of flattery that would melt a bronze statue? You see,” said Mr. Farrar, turning to me, “this self-assured young woman suffers from stage fright. So none of us are perfect.”

“But, Lani,” I said, “this is impossible. You're the least nervous person I know.”

“I don't feel ready.” This was a Lani I had not seen before. She did not want to meet my eyes, and busied herself with the surface of the piano, running her finger along it, rubbing out an invisible smudge. “I don't want to overextend myself.”

“I have no better student,” said Mr. Farrar gently. “For years, I've tried to encourage a recital. But Lani refuses. What sort of career can a person have as a pianist if that person cannot master her stage fright?”

“You need,” I offered, feeling bold, “more faith in yourself.”

Lani looked at me and exhaled slowly. “It's a great fear of mine. It always has been. I can't stand performing before a group of people of any size whatsoever. Ten people would terrify me. Three hundred people—I can't do it.”

“But you have to try,” I said. “It's like jumping off a high dive. You have to jump, and the rest is easy.” Actually, I would be terrified, too. But I was surprised to see this calm, strong person suddenly so frail.

Mr. Farrar gazed up at the ceiling again, as though seeing Lani there, performing beautifully before a stadium packed with fans. “This is your special problem, Lani. But remember this. Whether you perform or not, you are still a magnificent pianist, and you'll become even better, with time.”

He slipped into another room, and reappeared, leading a tall, thin woman with white hair. It was Lillian, his wife, and he introduced me as though I were someone he was pleased to have in his living room. She took my hand with an iron grip, and studied a place somewhere on my forehead. Her eyes searched, back and forth, like someone reading.

“I hate to interrupt a lesson,” she said. “You're sure you're entirely finished?”

Mr. Farrar helped her to a chair. She groped, and sat carefully. “We're trying to convince Lani to have a recital,” he said. “Not having good results, I'm afraid.”

“Oh, but you must talk her into it, Peter,” said Mrs. Farrar, turning in my direction. “She plays so beautifully. When she simply strikes a key, I know, wherever I am in the house, that Lani's here. Of course, artists have an emotional life that cannot always be argued with.”

I muttered something about trying to convince her, impressed, as I spoke, with the woman's flowing, moon-bright hair, and the way she fumbled for Mr. Farrar and found him, and held his hand. I felt as coarse as a piece of toast.

22

Gradually it is different. It is not easy anymore. The body does not transform itself like a tree changing into its autumn colors. It changes, but it is not a sure change.

Faith in the act fails. It does not fail entirely. It returns, finally the inner voice that says anything is possible.

Faith was always like this. Coming at the last moment to keep the walker on water from plunging in.

The phone rings. It rings again. And it seems that an entire life has been spent waiting for someone to answer.

This time she is tired. She sounds as if she has not slept for a long time, only that sleep which stills the body but does not rest it. Faith is dying in her, too, and as it dies it leaves her weak, her voice transparent. She is less of a human, now, and more of a ghost.

“Mother, I don't want you to worry.”

“I am worried, Mead. I can't help it.”

“Stop it. I'm all right.”

“Tell me where you are.” Her voice is so tired it's hard to recognize. And why does she seem wary?

“You should trust me.”

“How can I trust you, Mead? You've been gone such a long time. Sometimes—” and here she weeps, but it is not strong weeping—“sometimes I even forget what you look like. It's like your face changes in my memory and I can't get it clear in my mind.”

For a long time, there is no answer, and the dead breath and her breath are the only sounds. She is listening to this breath. It says something to her.

“I wish you would tell me where you are,” she says, and this time she's angry. “It's not fair for it to be a secret. Nobody wants to hurt you. We only want to know where you are.”

The hand hangs up the phone quickly, then, because there is something wrong.

23

Blue leaned against the wall beside a drain hole, a small round opening beside his knee like the end of a telescope that looked out at the sidewalk. A stain bled down from the opening. Blue looked out across the traffic, not seeming to see anything, a companion on either side of him, nondescript, mean blacks who looked from side to side as they smoked, like they were Blue's eyes.

“Hey, Blue,” I said casually.

The match in Blue's mouth lifted a little in greeting. His handsome black face looked across at nothing. The companions at his sides did not look at me after one of them studied my hip for a moment and let smoke ease out of his lungs.

“You still looking for a little business?” I asked, slipping my hands into my pockets and looking out at Lake Boulevard like everyone else.

Blue did not answer, which was a killing answer. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. The red head of the match was steady.

“Or maybe you've got all the money you need.” I forced myself to not say anything more in that tone; talk was that people who were flippant with Blue ended up in Shepherd Canyon wrapped up in a tarp.

Blue glanced at me for about as long as it would take a fly to go by me, a quick slip of the eyes, and I knew that I had his attention. I looked away, then, up into the hills which were barely visible behind a manila-yellow scum of smog or some other evil gas. I shifted my shoulders like a pitcher trying to loosen his muscles, poising myself in a kind of arrogance I knew Blue would respect.

“Of course,” I said. “We all like a little money.”

He didn't have to react to that; that was a statement of objective reality, a really useless comment except that I was still talking and he was still listening. I had considered going to the Asian criminals on campus, but I have trouble understanding them when they talk. The other criminals can't be trusted, but they can be understood. Vanity sticks out all over them, in the crease of their pants, in their hat brims, in their fingers as they light cigarettes. They want you to drop dead, but they give you a few seconds before they make a move to kill you.

“Money is a bad thing in a lot of ways,” I said.

I could feel Blue's attention melt. This was bordering on becoming a philosophical discussion. The match wiggled between his lips and stiffened.

“I know someone who has a gem. A jewel. A precious rock.”

Blue's foot edged out into the sidewalk and he turned his face away from me in an easy display of boredom.

“Russian topaz,” I said. I knew that Blue wouldn't know topaz from a dinosaur turd, but the actual name of a thing has fire to it, and I knew there would be a crackle inside him somewhere when he heard the name of the mineral. “It's a handsome thing.”

One of Blue's compatriots dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk. It was significant that the cigarette was only half-consumed. An elegant black shoe poised itself and lowered. It lifted to expose a squashed butt, with a little whisper of smoke dying out of the end of it.

I resisted the desire to keep talking. I crossed my arms, lowering my eyelids and letting my back find the wall. I swung a little silence between us like a bag of money.

Blue took the match between his long fingers and held it before his eyes, examining it carefully. He snapped it quickly, and, like a magician flipping through a card trick, held out his hand, received a pack of cigarettes, shook one prominent from the pack, and pulled it free with his lips. The broken match lay in the street.

“So,” I hurried to reach my point, “if you know anyone that might be interested in looking at a rock like that, let me know.”

Blue made the most handsome smile I have ever seen on a human countenance. He took the cigarette from his lips and made white teeth for a moment.

Angela was waiting for me in her car. She eyed me as though she did not like the way I was dressed, like I was wet with puke or something. She drove fast, whipping the car in and out of lanes. When we flashed along Skyline, among redwood trees and the splash of creeks finding the grate over sewers, she finally spoke. “What were you doing with those creeps?”

“What creeps?”

“Those gangsters.”

“My fellow students, you mean?”

“You always hang around with the worst trash.”

“I hang around with you, don't I?”

The car flew into a parking lot, and she stomped it to a stop under a redwood. The sudden silence as she shut off the engine made her words loud. “There's something wrong with you.”

“Nothing wrong with me. I'm perfect.”

She frowned, tilting back her head, looking beautiful. “No. You don't even look the same.”

“Let's go for a walk.”

“I don't want to go for a walk. Everyone can see that there's something wrong with you. Mr. Tyler mentioned it to me in the hall today.”

“Tyler is so dumb.”

“I know. He's dreck. Blotchy old bag of bones. If I were him, I'd ask to be shot. But he asked me what was wrong with you. He said you look like you weren't feeling well these days.”

“Tyler just feels one-up on me because I finally asked him to take me out of geometry. I made myself look puny on purpose, as a way of getting his sympathy. You have to know how to act in this world, you know.”

“I guess you're worried about your father.”

“Yes, I am. If there's something wrong with me, that's what it is.”

She looked skeptical, and at that moment, I could have slipped my hands around her neck and pressed my thumbs into her throat. “You're so mysterious,” she said with a smile, like it was a compliment.

“We'll run away.”

She drew a design on my neck with her finger. “Where?”

“Anyplace. New York. I don't know.”

“You wish you were Mead. Off in the world somewhere.”

“I'm just so sick of everything.”

“We don't have any money.”

“I'll get some.”

She slumped in her seat and crossed her arms. “It's a romantic idea, to run away. But I don't know.”

“You used to want to run away.”

“I like the idea of it. But I've seen the world, and it's a very boring place.”

That night I waited outside my mother's bedroom, listening. She was not home yet, but I wanted to be certain that she was not driving into the driveway, or driving up the street. The house had that heavy quiet that houses have when they are used to creaking and slamming with the presence of people. The air was warm and I did not like breathing it, like it was poisonous, and could decompose the lungs and heart.

It was too dark in the bedroom. My hand found the wallpaper and felt along the warm surface to the switch. Yellow light from the ceiling made me blink. My mother's bed was unmade, a wad of pink and white sheets. Her nightgown was rolled into a heap beside a pink slipper, the kind of slipper that is pink and hairy, and looks like a slovenly alcoholic ought to wear it to watch game shows on TV. I was made uneasy by the sloppiness of my mother's room, by the disorder of lipstick tubes and face cream and used Kleenex like bursts of powder-blue flak on the dresser. A wad of currency was stuffed into a plastic box.

The house made a noise, a click beneath my feet. I could not move. The floor seemed liquid and unsteady as I waited for another sound. There was only silence. I took a deep breath. I looked into my hands and they were trembling, shivering like I was in extreme cold, even though it was so hot in the bedroom I tasted salt on my upper lip.

The jewelry box was a cheap wooden case with a jar of Vaseline on top of it. I moved the jar to the stained doily, and turned the little brass key in the lock. The key turned, but then froze. I worked it and it would not move. I shook it in its slot, because it was not strength that kept it from working, but cheapness, a failure of the tinny metal to obey the command it should have followed without a whisper. There was a rasp inside the lock, and the lid sprang open like the mouth of a robot alligator, waiting for me to insert my hand so it could bite it off.

My hand shrank from a jumble of jewelry, most of it nearly worthless: bracelets and necklaces, an agate ring, a pile of hoop earrings and gold chains. At the very edge of the cheap horde, like someone trying to disassociate from a rowdy crowd, glittered the topaz earrings. I touched one of the stones with my forefinger. It was warm, the temperature of a human body, and stirred slightly at my touch.

There was a bump in the hall. The yellow light in the room brightened and every sound was loud: the creak of the floor beneath my feet, the burr of a cricket somewhere outside, the whispering consultation of appliances in the kitchen. I waited, and knew as I waited that I was finished. Whatever happened in the future, I would not escape. I saw it as clearly as if I read about it in the television schedule: Peter's Hopes Vanish.

I waited like a gunman waiting for a cop to make the first move, watching the doorknob, poised for it to turn. It did not turn. It stayed perfectly still, and the sounds of the house diminished to the gentle mutter things have when there is no one but one person in a house. I never want to live alone, I thought. I would not be able to stand the terror of the little sounds.

The topaz was the color of honey, but I did not even want to touch it again. I did not know, really, how much it was worth. Perhaps I could get a few hundred dollars out of Blue, and my mother would not notice that the earrings were gone for several days, at least. I could go anywhere for a few hundred dollars.