I see you everywhere (13 page)

Julia Glass

“Our crabgrass welcome mat? I guess that’s a lawn if you come from New York.”

Zip and I take the front steps, Louisa sits on the grass. “This does feel nice, I’m sure you’re right,” she says, slanting her face to the sky, sipping her juice.

Zip begins to expound on our inner sun compass and his solar-therapy program for shut-ins. Through the open window above us, the phone rings.

My voice clicks on, backed by Charles Mingus. Mom tackles that beep like an otter swatting a fish onto dry land. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning, honey, you are never in! Shouldn’t you be working on that paper of yours? Are you at the library? Are you there but
hiding
?” Crackling pause. “Well, I am beside myself here, beside myself ! Call me right away, please, the minute you get this, and tell me what the police have to say. Time is of the essence. The FBI practically laughed in my face, and your father says we’ll never be able to extradite on dognapping charges, but so help me, if I have to fly out myself, that man will pay with his skin. I will flay him alive with a bread knife. I’ve already changed the locks on the carriage house. I don’t care if his great-great-grandfather did build the First Presbyterian.”

The three of us listen for another long minute, as if to a radio play. Finally, the machine puts an end to her tirade. I feel guilty and decide that if she calls right back, which she often does when she’s cut off, I’ll run inside and pick up the phone, but she doesn’t.

“Tomatoes. She should cut down on nightshades,” Zip says with compassion. This is his routine diagnosis of people who lose their temper, and he may be right; he never eats tomatoes or eggplant, and he never gets mad.

Louisa’s travel pallor has vanished. “Do you think it ever occurs to her that people have problems all their own?” Nothing and no one raises her temperature faster than Mom. “And what’s all this stuff about extradition?”

Zip shakes his head with his typical air of omniscience. “Dogs. Glas_9780375422751_3p_all_r1.qxp 7/2/08 10:21 AM Page 83
I See You Everywhere

83

According to the law, they’re mere property. The police will treat them like stolen appliances. Worse.” His tone is ominous.

“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?”

“Well, Lou, while you’re flipping out about Hugh, Mom is flipping out about Tighty, who’s also clearly flipping out, though I’m not sure about what.” I tell my sister what I know.

“A plan. You’ll need a plan,” says Zip, who doesn’t question the wisdom of getting involved. Zip believes in loyalty to family against all logic. That’s fine for him, since his parents have passed away and his only brother is well employed, happily married, and lives in Montreal.

“What I need is a good long nap,” I say. “Then dinner. I have a craving for greasy nachos; sorry, Zip. A margarita, big and salty. Otis Redding.”

Louisa says to Zip, “I like the way Clem always knows what she wants.”

Louisa’s so smart about some things, so gullible about others. And a master of double-edged praise—both sides sharp as those Japanese knives.

She never lets me forget this one ridiculous summer: the summer after she’d graduated from Harvard, the summer after I found out I didn’t get in, that I’d be shipping out to Michigan instead (deep down I was glad). She was commuting to a job at the art museum in Providence, but she’d flipped for this guy up the road who restored vintage motorcycles. I didn’t notice. Honest. In general, I ignored her. We had so little in common. (That’s still mostly true, except for family, which sometimes—like right now—looms a little too large.)

I was a lifeguard at the beach club. Evenings, I volunteered at the bird sanctuary: pinned wings, fed displaced nestlings. I’d learned to ride a unicycle and rode it to both of my jobs because they were near. Some mornings, Louisa would pass me in her frumpy little Dodge; she’d wave without looking, then head for the highway, hands on the wheel at ten and two.

When Louisa’s car broke down, the motorcycle man came by with his Glas_9780375422751_3p_all_r1.qxp 7/2/08 10:21 AM Page 84 84

Julia Glass

tools. They were drinking beer on the porch when I soared around the corner on my single wheel, holding a cardboard box. “Are you crazy? Poor thing,” said Louisa after peering down into the box. The box held a baby osprey. The motorcycle man—Mike was his name—asked a million questions that night about birds, but the osprey wasn’t the magnet. There’s something about unicycles, I learned: the subtle way you swivel your hips to stay balanced.

After two weeks of my polishing chrome in his garage, of his helping me feed that ravenous osprey, I invited Mike to our family’s Fourth of July cookout. Louisa had this fabulous dress: blue silk, low neck, tight hips—on me, outrageously short. I’d borrowed it before, so I figured she wouldn’t care. So there we were dancing, Mike and me, not even close or romantic, just flinging ourselves around and laughing, when Louisa comes right over and throws her wine in my face. How was I to know that, weeks before, she’d taken Mike to her museum, come back to tour his collection, crept home from his house at dawn, certain this was true love? He hadn’t told me, nor had she, but all Louisa saw was revenge. She screamed at me the next morning that it wasn’t her fault if Harvard didn’t take me. I laughed at her and said, “You think I’m getting back at you for better SAT scores? How big is
your
universe?” Needlessly cruel, okay, but my hair still smelled like wine.

“He has such beautiful skin. I couldn’t stop staring.”

“Yeah, well, no booze, no butts, and if you can believe it, no caffeine. That’ll do it.”

“Or genes. I’m convinced more and more these things are genes,”

Louisa says.

“The Gospel According to Mom.”

Louisa flinches. “I’m admiring his complexion, Clem. I’m not asking if he’s up for stud.”

We are sitting in Jorge’s Cocina, a café out on a wharf. Half a mile down the coast, the aquarium looks like a ship that yearns toward open Glas_9780375422751_3p_all_r1.qxp 7/2/08 10:21 AM Page 85
I See You Everywhere

85

sea. Sometimes I stop here after work and watch the sea lions below. They lurk around the barnacled pilings or sun on the rocks, their Goodyear hides gleaming blue and cinnamon brown. Call down and they squint up, their noses pointing out precisely
you,
sniffing you out long distance, benignly condescending. Throw them something to eat, they chortle and bark. I throw down chum I swipe from the otter station, a ziplock Baggie stuffed in my knapsack before I leave work. And if I’ve been writing, sifting through stats on the poaching up north, I look at these guys and feel better, just a little. I like to think they’re safe here, protected by tourism kitsch. They tolerate heckling, broken bottles, plastic debris, they eat Mallomars and Slim Jims, but nobody’s out to shoot them. The best I can wish for them is safety.

“Does he have a sense of humor? I can’t tell,” Louisa’s saying. “Maybe not—but he seems almost wise. He knew so much about me.”

“Excuse me,” I say, “but do you think I never mention your existence?”

“Inner things, things about who I am at the core.”

“Let me guess. He gave you that book. Wow, Lou, this is
so
not you.”

Zip carries around extra copies of the book that changed his life. It’s called
Inner Aura: Gem of Nine Facets.
Not a stupid book, pretty eloquent in fact, but it’s one of those if-you-don’t-go-Zen-you’ll-never-getyour-shit-together sermons that tempt me because they’re so sure and then bug me because they’re so naïve. I tried yoga once, but every time I looked in the mirror and saw myself as a spandex pretzel, I thought, Who’s this meant to fool? I’m anything but pure. When we argue, I tell Zip the human race is evolving apart, not together. There are many paths, okay, but they do not lead to one truth. And unless you lose a few million brain cells en route, they do not lead to some all-infusing serenity. Serenity is one thing we’re always leaving behind. We watch it recede as fast as an oil truck crossing Nevada. Nothing but a cloud of dust.

“You’re right,” says Louisa. “I never go for these packaged wisdoms, but I felt as if he really cared about helping me.”

“Unlike Hugh.”

Glas_9780375422751_3p_all_r1.qxp 7/2/08 10:21 AM Page 86 86

Julia Glass

“That’s not the point.” She looks hurt.

“So what did Zip prescribe? He likes to prescribe.”

“Well, he says I need camping.”

“Oh Lou.” Now I’m cracking up. “You? Camp?”

“He
says,
” she continues, defying my ridicule, “that the only cure for city living—which he says is deeply toxic, and who can disagree with that?—the only cure is sleeping outdoors whenever you can. Roofs compress the spirit, he says. So do mattresses. Marriage, he says, is like an old carpet. No matter how beautiful or priceless, no matter how familiar, it needs airing out, needs to rest from being trampled on. He says I did the right thing by coming here.”

I am thinking that Zip should run for governor. “You’re right that he cares, Lou, but the trouble with Zip is that to him everyone is a problem waiting for a solution. His solution.
The
solution.”

“Everyone has problems, Clem. He’s trying to help. But you—I suppose you don’t have problems.”

“Oh, by the score,” I say. “Please. But nobody else has the solutions that suit
me.
Certainly not in some list of noble platitudes.”

Our skillet of fajitas arrives, lots of fussy little dishes on the side. Right away, Louisa takes most of the sour cream. She does that when we share something, takes the bigger half. Like she’s letting me know she deserves more because she came first.

“Don’t you like the guy?” she says.

“Yes, sure!” I say, nearly choking on my first bite. “But sometimes I wonder if it’s possible to
move
him, to catch him off guard. He’s like a cat. Everything that happens he’s already seen. He’s one step ahead of the world every minute.”

“Have you noticed,” says Louisa, “how everything he says starts with a noun? For instance, when I was describing how I yell at Hugh and Hugh says nothing—but in this utterly blank way that only enrages me more—Zip said, ‘Self-awareness. Focus more on yourselves than on each other.’ Like that.”

“Zip’s a noun kind of guy. Very concrete. That’s what I mean. He has no doubts. It’s admirable, but it’s also a little creepy.”

Glas_9780375422751_3p_all_r1.qxp 7/2/08 10:21 AM Page 87
I See You Everywhere

87

“That’s certainly not our problem,” Louisa says morosely.

“Listen,” I warn her. “Don’t drag me down, okay?” Because I feel it begin to happen, the air starting to thin.

For a while we just eat, glancing out the window, as if each of us were alone. There’s no moon, so the ocean looks dark and dense, like moss. I like to picture the life underneath. I’ve been to Alaska, to the Amazon—

I’ve seen and heard wildness, true wildness—but under the ocean moves me the most, because it’s so strange, so out of time. In Barrow, I got to listen to whales, the crazy-fabulous sounds they make, calling to one another as they swim along, staying in touch as they migrate north. It sounded like a jungle or a space-age orchestra. Listen to that for hours on end and human voices, when you hear them again, sound pointless. When I go to work at the aquarium, when I dive down into the kelp forest that’s fed by the bay, by its tides, I love that moment when the water takes the weight of the tank, how I feel the cold but it’s somewhere else, benignly removed from my skin. The wet suit holds me tight all over, dependable as the ideal mate. It deflects the bite of the world, fills me with a fearless cocaine shimmer. Everything I see sways to the sound of my breath—swarming bubbles, schools of flashing fish—and I hear just how alive I am.

I fantasize about sneaking into the aquarium at night, diving down among the sleepy creatures—the petticoated cuttlefish; the nurse sharks; the rays, soft as velour. During the day, when I come bearing food, the sharks and the rays are the most aggressive, nudging and skimming my body over and over. But in the night world I long for, we are equals. We drift together between rocking ribbons of seaweed, no one watching, no one asking questions. No crises to solve, no talk of any kind. Everything drugged and blue as a dream, under the skin of the sea.

“Time for music,” I say. I head for the jukebox, but I decide against Otis. Too risky; too sad. “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” is what I almost always play. Zip likes it, too. The one time I dragged him here, we put it on, closed our eyes, and held hands, just sitting at the bar. It felt intense the way it feels intense locking eyes with a tiger. (Zip’s an intensity artist, one reason I can’t let him go.) So tonight I pick Bob Marley. Glas_9780375422751_3p_all_r1.qxp 7/2/08 10:21 AM Page 88 88

Julia Glass

“Lively Up Yourself.” “Love Is the Only Law.” For Louisa I punch in

“Respect,” dependable, wise Aretha. Because of the numbers, it’s already playing when I get back. Louisa’s smiling, a nice reward.

“Corny,” I say. “But true, right?” I’m not referring to Hugh, but she takes it that way.

“Well, the issue’s not respect.” She dips into my guacamole, having finished hers. “It’s more like . . . apathy. The other night we were walking home after a movie. It was the first really warm night. We were walking by the planetarium and the park. You could smell the new leaves, rainy without the rain, you know? And I thought about . . .” She plays with her silverware.

“What? Thought about what?”

“The future. Us, our future. I was in a great mood, and I wanted to talk about it, like where would we be in five years? Would we have children? What would we be doing? You know.”

I could say,
In fact, no, I do not,
but I nod.

“I tell him how maybe it’s time to start thinking about a baby. I ask if he wants to stay in the city forever. I tell him I’ve been thinking about our moving up to New England, maybe Boston if I could get a museum job—just thinking. He walks along, not a single word. I’m doing one of my monologues, but he could nod or smile or look at me,
something.
For all I know, he’s planning tomorrow’s lesson, thinking about Bronson Alcott or the Bay of Pigs while I’m talking to the air. So I stop. Just stop. And of course he walks on a ways before he notices I’ve stopped. ‘Where
are
you?’ I say when he turns around. ‘I’m right here,’ he says in that bland voice I hate. I ask him what he thinks about the things I’ve said. He says, ‘Sounds good to me.’ I say, ‘What, which things,
what
sounds good?’