The Year of Fog (35 page)

From the baths, I take the dirt path up to Louis’s, where the sidewalk begins. I wander down past the Cliff House, past the Camera Obscura. The fog is so dense Seal Rocks are barely visible, just vague outlines jutting up from the gray water. A family of tourists, shivering in their shorts and sandals, are gathered at the pay telescope. I’m not sure what they hope to see. I remember the first time I came to San Francisco as a teenager with my parents. The trip was one of my mother’s ongoing attempts to “save the family,” a vague phrase she’d toss out every few months, when the anger between her and my father had reached a fever pitch and divorce seemed imminent. Year after year we made these dismal trips—to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Montreal.

On that trip to San Francisco, we took a ferry to Alcatraz. We have photographs from the journey; I was wearing a denim miniskirt that was obscenely short, and Annabel looked funereal in her goth garb and black eyeliner. There is a photograph of the two of us together in one of the tiny cells that was used for solitary confinement. We’re standing with our hands on our hips, elbows touching, no smiles. A stranger looking at the photo might surmise that we were two sisters forced to stand side by side, that we were angry with each other, posing for the picture in the aftermath of some terrible fight. But I remember differently. I remember, on the ferry to the island, my parents sat inside while Annabel and I stood on deck. We huddled together for warmth as the boat slipped through the fog.

“I wish they’d go ahead and get it over with,” Annabel said.

She was talking about my parents’ life together, their hopeless marriage. “Me too.”

It was the first time in months that we had talked about anything of substance. That long, melancholy summer was marked by a silence that seemed absolute. My parents rarely spoke to one another, and Annabel and I had sunk into an adolescent quietude, speaking only to communicate the most mundane sorts of things:
please pass the salt, when does the plane leave, we’ll meet you by Coit Tower at 4:35
. We felt like no sort of family. Like four strangers randomly seated in the same compartment on a train, waiting to be relieved of one another’s company. In that darkened cell on Alcatraz Island, it wasn’t anger that radiated from our unsmiling faces; it was boredom, a sense of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong people for company.

During the ferry ride from Alcatraz to the pier, Annabel stayed inside, sharing a hot dog and stringy french fries with a college boy she’d met in the gift shop. I stood alone at the rail, watching the city approach. Fogbound, San Francisco looked like a place in a dream, not quite real. It was a beautiful city, unlike any place I had been. I thought of my parents down below, sitting as far apart as the bench would allow, each simmering in their separate unhappiness, all the ugliness of their past fights piled between them, an invisible yet insurmountable wall.

Years later, when my parents were in the midst of their bitter divorce, my mother would tell me, “There’s a line you cross in a relationship that you can’t go back from. It’s different for every relationship. Your father and I crossed that line twenty years ago.”

I vowed that, if I ever had a family, I would handle things differently. I imagined a man, a child, a harmonious home. Three people with ties so strong, nothing could sever them. I did not imagine, in those days, my own vast capacity for failure. I did not understand that a single moment, a choice poorly made, an eye turned in the wrong direction, could cause a crack in a relationship that would grow wider, day by day, until the gap was too wide to cross.

I take the steps down to the beach. A faint fishy odor permeates the air. The brownish sand is littered with tiny blue jellyfish, slippery underfoot. The water is strangely flat. Across the Great Highway, the broken windmill rises over Golden Gate Park like some prehistoric beast. The crisp scent of eucalyptus blends with the ocean air. I kick off my shoes and feel the cold sand. Fog settles over the western edge of the continent. There is no horizon visible, only white blending into gray. I am struck again by the lonely magnificence of this city, its impossible and dangerous beauty.

A shape moves toward me down the beach. A surfer, board held at her side, the diving suit shimmering with water. A blue stripe stretches from shoulder to ankle. The surfer lifts her arm and waves. I glance behind me to see who she might be waving at, but there’s no one behind me. As the distance closes, I can make out the long dark hair, the smallish figure. Goofy.

“You’re back.” She smiles, exposing that odd, lovely tooth.

“Good to see you.”

“You too.” Goofy goes in for a hug. “Sorry, now you’re all wet. Hey, congratulations. I saw the story on the news. You found her.”

I nod.

“That’s amazing.” She moves her weight from one foot to the other. There’s a long pause. “Really. I was telling all my friends about it. Totally amazing. Like a miracle or something. I think about it all the time. It’s so cool.” She reaches out and squeezes my arm. “Looks like you put on a little weight.”

“I tried.”

“So, you ready for that surfing lesson I promised?”

“Sure. When?”

“How about now?”

Goofy puts her hand on my shoulder and leans toward me. I can smell the wax from her board, a sweet grapefruit scent. She’s gotten a haircut, or, more likely, given herself one; now she has bangs, very short, slightly uneven. “Last chance. I’m leaving day after tomorrow. Going to college, just like I said.”

“Where?”

“Fayetteville, Arkansas. Can you believe it? I have a friend there who can get me in-state tuition. It’s dirt cheap. No beaches, no surfing, no temptation.”

“That’s great. Congratulations.”

“So? What about the lesson?”

The truth is I’ve got nowhere to go. No one to see. No reason to refuse. I’ve spent the last few months in the company of surfers, yet I’ve never once surfed. I’ve walked miles and miles of coastline, yet I cannot recall the last time I stepped foot in the water. “Why not?”

“Excellent. Let’s go to my place. I’ll fix you up with a suit and board.”

I slip on my shoes and follow her up the beach to the parking lot. I climb into her car, an old Volvo station wagon with the back seat removed. She slides her board in, and we ease onto the Great Highway. The windows are down and the radio is playing—
every song is a comeback, every moment’s a little bit later
.

“God,” Goofy says, turning the dial. “I’m so sick of that song.” She dials past static and live talk radio and eighties revival, finally stopping at Chris Isaak, “San Francisco Days.”

Her place is on Forty-Sixth Avenue. It’s a little pink bungalow, situated just a few yards from the street. “My roommates are in Vegas,” she says, unlocking the door. “I’ve had the run of the place for a week. It’s great.”

Her bedroom is just off the foyer. A closet of a room, with dark blue walls and lots of plants, all thriving. On the floor beneath the window, there’s a twin-size mattress. Several boxes sit on the floor, taped and ready to go, labeled neatly:
records, clothes, kitchen
. There’s one box that hasn’t been sealed yet, a jumble of disparate things arranged on the floor beside it.

“Where’s the rest of your stuff?”

“This is it. I’m just taking the essentials.” She points to the open box. “I’ve been keeping this memory box all my life. You know, photos, old letters, my first video game, all sorts of junk. I hardly ever open it. But now, looking through it, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just get rid of it all.” She kicks at the pile on the floor. “Really, what use is this stuff to me now?”

I pick up a trophy that’s lying on its side. It’s one of those generic trophies, a plastic base with a figurine on top—also plastic, but painted gold. The figurine is a girl with pigtails, standing with her arms at her sides, with blank eyes and an open mouth. The little inscription plate has fallen off, leaving just a faded rectangle beneath it. “What’s this for?”

“Fifth-grade spelling bee. Third place.” She reaches over and takes it out of my hand, examining it closely. “I don’t even know why I kept this thing, maybe because it’s the only thing I ever won.”

“What was your word?”

“Acquiesce. A-C-Q-U-I-E-S-C-E. And this,” she says, holding up a red, white, and blue potholder. “Foster Mom Judy was really into arts and crafts. We spent Fourth of July that year making patriotic kitchen accessories.”

She tosses the potholder into the trash, then picks up the box and holds it over the garbage can, dumping everything in—photos, papers, a little red diary with a broken lock. I’m impressed by the alacrity and speed with which Goofy is leaving everything behind, going on to something new.

“Aren’t you sad to be moving?”

She stands there for a minute, hands on her hips, thinking. “Sure, but it’s time for a change.”

She pulls a wet suit out of the closet. “Here, put this on,” she says, looking me up and down. “It should fit.” She keeps talking, and I realize she’s not going to leave the room. At first, I try to be modest. I pull the suit on under my skirt. But it’s difficult to squeeze into the tight, stretchy fabric, and before long Goofy is standing in front of me, pulling the wet suit over my hips, saying, “Here, let me help.” Then she’s rearranging my breasts to get them into the big neoprene suit, and I’m reminded of a Saturday at Gayfer’s Department Store when I was twelve, when a woman in a red pantsuit fitted me for my first bra. I can’t say why, but I start crying.

“Hey,” Goofy says, cupping my face in both hands and wiping away the tears with her thumbs. “What’s up? You want to talk about it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The water will make you feel better,” she says, turning me around. “I know it always works for me.” Her finger traces an irregular circle on my back. “Birthmark?”

“No. I got a bad sunburn when I was thirteen. My whole back peeled, except that one spot. It gets darker every year.”

“Like a skin memory,” she says. The zipper snaking up my spine is cold, and a shiver goes all through me. “Your body’s way of reminding you how stupid you were. I have one, too.”

She pulls up the right leg of her wet suit, revealing a deep purple scar around her calf. “First time I surfed, I went under hard and got tangled up in the leash. There was this weird moment underwater, when I couldn’t tell which direction was up or down, and I was swirling around inside the wave, and I could feel the leash cutting into my skin, and I saw my own blood—and I swear, it was the most peaceful moment of my life. I had no control at all over the situation—I was completely at the mercy of the wave, and it felt fucking great.”

We walk back to the beach in silence. Then we’re standing on the sand just below the parking lot, stretching, and the ocean looks vast and impossible, and I realize there’s no way I’m prepared for this, and I’m trying to come up with a way to tell Goofy I’m just too scared to do it. But there’s no time, because all of a sudden she finishes her stretches and begins to trot, shouting, “Follow me.” It’s that slow, excited jog all surfers seem to share, as if every muscle in her body is anticipating the ocean. I jog along behind her, until the sand gives way to rushing foam, and we’re wading against the current. The water is like ice, a quick shock that sends an electric jolt to my brain.

“Just do what I do,” she says, and then we’re on our stomachs, arms paddling, moving away from shore. My arms ache, my fingers are numb, my mouth fills with seawater—but something about this feels right. We paddle hard for ten minutes, then Goofy gets into a sitting position on her board. After a few tries, with Goofy shouting encouragement, I’m sitting, straddling the board, out of breath.

“What now?” I say.

“We wait.”

“How long?”

“Maybe a minute, maybe an hour. Just relax.”

“I’m scared to death.”

“Don’t be. When I give the word, start paddling fast. Then just lean into it. Let it take you in.”

“You make it sound easy.”

Gradually, my body adjusts to the temperature. Goofy stays close by, but she doesn’t talk. The clouds shift briefly, revealing an orange slip of sun; moments later it disappears. I can hear the surf crashing on shore. The sea moves gently beneath us, lifting and lowering, lifting and lowering. I feel sleepy, but aware.

“You could go with me,” Goofy says after a while. She’s sitting up on her board, feet dangling in the water, hands poised in front of her as gracefully as a girl at finishing school. She looks good here, at home, as if this is where she’s meant to be. I have a hard time imagining her landlocked, stuck in a desk in some airless college classroom.

“What?”

“Take a road trip. I rented a Ryder truck. I’ve got room.”

“That’s a tempting offer, but I don’t think I’m cut out for Arkansas.” The waves move up and down, up and down.

“What’s keeping you here?”

“Lots of things,” I say, but I can’t think of anything specific to tell her. “Want to know how wacky my family was?”

Goofy smiles. “How wacky?”

“When I was a kid, my mom bought me and my sister these notebooks that we were required to write in once a year. On the morning of December 31, after breakfast, she’d send each of us to our separate rooms, my father to his study, and she’d go into the kitchen. We had to spend the morning evaluating our lives, what significant things we had done or failed to do during the past 364 days. At noon, she would call a family meeting around the dining room table, and we each had to read off our list.”

“Heavy.”

“Then she made us say what we would have done differently, if we could go back and do it again. We were kids, you know, so it wasn’t all that interesting. Like, ‘I wouldn’t have stolen Cindy Novak’s Hello Kitty pencil case,’ or ‘I would have taken better care of the sea monkeys.’ By the time my sister and I were in high school, we started making things up just to get under our mom’s skin, like ‘I wouldn’t have slept with the football team.’”

Goofy is quiet, looking out at the horizon. “Sounds nice,” she says. “I could get into that, family meetings.”

“The weird thing is, I can’t break the habit. Once a year, I take stock. I was thinking about it last night. I feel like a year of my life has been sucked into a void, some bottomless black hole. A nightmare year that hardly seems real. I lost Emma, I found Emma, end of story. And now I’m stuck. I don’t know where to go from here. I can’t figure out what happens next.”