When You Go Away (33 page)

     "Who's there?" she asked.

     He sighed.  "How could you tell?"

     "You weren't as organized as usual.  Things were falling.  There's noise.  I'm not used to hearing
that
."

     "This probably isn't the best time to talk about it."

     "You deserve somebody, Noel.  You deserve everything you want, and I want to know.  I want to be a part of your life."

     “You have so much on your plate, Peri."

     She brushed back her bangs and sighed.  "I know, I know.  But I need to be there for you, too.  Like you've always been there for me, Noel.  Even when we were kids.  Even before anything happened.  Before Brooke.  So tell me."

     "It's someone I met recently."

     "What's her name?" she said.

     "You know her."

     "I do?"

     "You remember Susan."

     Peri bit her lip, thinking back through the first names of Noel’s girlfriends, the ones she’d chanced to meet.  Yes, Susan was a couple of summers ago, dark and tall, smiles for the kids.  For Brooke. There was a picnic, a visit in Susan’s car, a convertible Volvo, the story of a swift breakup.  “Oh.  From that summer.  How did you reconnect?”

     “I don’t know.  I was sitting in that courtroom, and I kept wishing for someone to look at.  Someone to turn to when the lawyers started in.  And I guess I was wishing for Susan.  So I called her.”

     Peri smiled. "So did you have to promise you were a changed man?"

     He was silent, and Peri realized that of course he had to tell her he changed because he had.  They all had, these last weeks stripping off the past to find some luster beneath. 

     “Yeah, but I hope she believe me.  This time.”

     "Where is she now?"

     "In the bathroom."

     "So . . . this time?  Is it going to work?"

     “Maybe.  She knows about me, you, us.  Everything.  All of it.”

     "I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry,” she said, not wanting to think he’d never had a committed relationship because of their family, the way they all left when they were needed the most.

     "Don’t be.  It’s not your fault.  Look.  I'll come over after work.  We can talk about it--about everything--later."

     "All right.  Noel?"

     "What?"

     "I love you."

     "I love you too, Peri."  She hung up, and she sat in her bed.  She didn't really know Noel or Graham, two men she'd loved and needed so deeply.   

     Putting the phone down, she got out of bed and walked into the living room, the streetlight sending yellow streaks through the blinds.  Peri sat on the couch, looking out toward the bottlebrush tree and then the street, the night a distant unknown planet, no one moving, no cars, the air still and light.  This is what her life would be then, a moving into
what she didn't know, everything a mystery, her own body different, changed, made whole by chemicals and talking and love.  She'd never live her life the way she had--not only because it was impossible, but because she didn't want it any more.  At last.  She didn't want the Monte Veda house or Graham or the old patterns of doing everything and feeling nothing.  She'd be a mom again, her children a couple miles away, and she'd move into it slowly, as if adapting to a new atmosphere.  She'd live with her father and learn to love him in another way, not like she had before, desperate and clinging and full of despair.  Closing her eyes against the night, Peri breathed in, holding the night scene in her mind.  From this point on, anything might happen.

Carl hadn't been able to stand it, his legs twitching, his face full of imaginary welts that he couldn't stop scratching.  He and Noel sat next to each other at Peri's sentencing hearing, and from the moment he'd sat down, Carl shifted and jerked as if he'd been attacked by fire ants that traveled his whole body, biting and stinging, his heart rate racing at his imagined demise.  Noel nudged him once, twice, and then Carl patted Noel's leg and slid out the aisle, almost running to the courtroom door, pushing out into the hallway.  Air.  He leaned over, his hands on his thighs, and took in breaths as if he'd just had a long rally, the tennis ball going back and forth and back and forth, Ralph finally hitting it into the net.

     "Carl?  Carl?  Are you okay?"

     Wiping his forehead, he stood up and saw Rosie Candelero in front of him.  He nodded and breathed out, taking in a smaller breath and then a smaller one, trying to stop the room from spinning.  As he took in air, she jabbed a hand in her purse, and she pulled out a crumbled paper bag, smoothed it a couple of times and then shook it open.  "Here.  Breathe into this."

     Grabbing the bag by its neck, he pulled it to his face, breathing in slowly, his head beginning to clear, the pin sticks all over his face disappearing under Rosie's calm gaze.

     "What's going on in there?" she asked finally, leading him to a bench.  He breathed once more from the stale bag, and then handed it back to her.  She balled it up and tossed
it into the trash, laughing.  "At least I've cleared one thing out of this messy bag.  So . . . what's happening?"

     "Absolutely flipping nothing.  We are just waiting and waiting."  He gave her a half-smile and then ran his hand over his head, smoothing down his hair.  People in leather shoes clop, clopped across the floor, and for an instant, Carl found himself waiting in another hallway, with another nurse thirty-eight years ago as Janice labored with Peri.  He'd had the same light feeling, the same stupefied amazement that other people could be walking down the hall, going on with their lives, while his seemed to pivot on the edge of tragedy and disaster and joy, all at the same time.

     "Sit here for a minute.  Let me go look."  Leaving her purse on the bench, Rosie stood up and walked to the door, cracking it slightly, and peering in.  Carl watched her, again impressed by the way she could take in what no one else wanted to, a disabled child, a crazy daughter, a court room drama.  It couldn't have been simply her nurse's training that taught her to keep her eyes open and move toward the people who needed her.  That was who she was, all the time, always Rosie.

     "I've got to say, Carl, things look good in there.  There's an awful lot of nodding going on."  Rosie sat back down and patted his knee, just as he had patted Noel's.

     "Good.  I can't take one more thing, I think.  If Peri has to go back to jail, I think it will kill the kids.  Carly barely handled going there the once.  And if there's more?  I don't know what we'll do."

     "Oh, Carl.  You'll do what you've always done.  Be the dad, pull your kids out of trouble."

     "But I haven't always done that.  For a long time, I was out of the picture.  They couldn’t have cared less about me, and I let it stay that way because . . . well, because it was easier.  Hell, I could go on with my fine life, say I had two great kids, and then play tennis the entire weekend."

     Rosie sighed.  "We screw up.  No doubt.  But then if we're lucky, we get a chance to make it up.  Instant karma.  It's like a gift, even though it looks like crap.  With me and my boy?  I tell you, I'm making up for first marrying my husband and giving him to my son as a father, and then divorcing him and taking him away.  It's a Catch 22.  But you do your best."

     Carl nodded, relaxing, leaning against the wall, his breath steady.  "You're right.  I know I shouldn't wish for things, but she needs a break.  This lawyer Preston seems okay to me now.  So maybe it'll work out."

     "How's Brooke?"  Rosie asked after a pause.

     "You wouldn't believe it.  She's like a lawn gone brown finally watered and fertilized.  Even her speech is better.  For all her holier-than-though, Queen-of-the-universe act, Garnet has been great for Brooke.  For all the kids.  And believe you me, I never thought I'd say those words aloud."

     And as he smiled at Rosie and she smiled back, the comfort between them spreading into the warm air, the courtroom doors opened, and there was Peri and Noel and that
Preston
fellow, arm in arm, all smiling, and Rosie reached out her hand and squeezed his.  Later, as he was hugging his children and shaking
Preston
's hand, he turned back to wave Rosie over, but she was gone.  The only thing she'd left behind was the warm spot she'd pressed on his hand.



After the hearing, Noel and Preston went back to Preston's office to hammer out the details of Peri's next year, and Carl took Peri to her appointment with Dr. Kolakowski, dropping her off at the front of the College Avenue building, watching her walk down the slated hallway.  For a few minutes, he stared at his watch and then the steering wheel and then found himself driving the Corvair down
College Avenue
, turning onto Broadway, and then taking a left on
Pleasant Valley Boulevard
before he realized where he was going.  Actually, he was surprised he even knew where to go because he'd not gone to the interment, barely staying for the reception in the church hall after the service.  He'd told the kids he had a meeting to get to, but truthfully, he'd been scared to stay in a room full of Janice's friends, the women who knew the stories of his life, the way he'd been as a husband and a father and a man.  And probably, he would have ended up seeing one or two of the women he'd slept with during his marriage and on the day of Janice's funeral, that didn't seem kind. 
After all this time
, he thought that day,
I'm developing a conscience.

     So it was by feel and memory and partial description from the man inside the visitor's building that he made it to Janice's grave, the tombstone a simple
, Janice Lynn Randall, 1937-1997, Beloved Mother and Grandmother. 
He'd never said goodbye, and he didn't
mean at her deathbed.  Carl never explained himself to her, not one bit, leaving without the courtesy of telling her it wasn't her fault.  All those years, he'd let her think what she wanted, blaming him or herself or the world.  But he'd never been brave enough until now, when it was too late, to face her.

     He leaned against a crypt and then backed away from it, realizing what he was doing.  It was so weird to build yourself a little fortress after death.  Like anything could protect you in the ground, your bones turning to powder.  He looked around and the fields of stones and markers and family crypts, seeing for the first time as he stood almost on top of his dead wife, that this was another way people could stay together.  Maybe his desire to be cremated and thrown into the ocean was another way for him to separate, to leave nothing behind for anyone. 

     Carl crossed his arms and shifted on his feet, finally sitting on the ground just beside Janice's plot, smoothing the grass--a thick Bermuda--with his hand, the one Rosie had touched.

     "Our girl," he began.  "Our girl is going to be okay.  Like she used to be.  Or not like she used to be.  What she might have been if things had been different.  If I hadn't messed up royally, Janice.  I know you'd never have let it get this bad, but I'm really trying now.  She's going to be with me for a year, while she gets better.  And Garnet has Carly, Ryan, and Brooke.  All of them.  I know.  Unbelievable.  But she's been great.  Not at first, but now."

     Folding his knees and circling them with his arms, he looked around the cemetery, the plot on top of a hill, the view of Oakland and San Francisco before him.  The sun hung
over South San Francisco, beginning its fall into the Pacific Ocean.  By the time it rose again, Carl and Peri would be one day into their new lives, a year of starting over.  Like Rosie said.  Instant karma.

     "I'm sorry, Janice.  That's what I came to say.  I'm sorry about what I did.  I’m sorry I wasn't a good husband.  And it's too late for us.  For you.  But I promise I’m going to make it okay for Peri.  And Noel."

     He stood up slowly, his knee clicking as he rose.  "I’m going now.  I probably won't be back.  But I thought I'd tell you what was happening.  I thought I'd tell you about the kids.  If something happens, I'll let you know.  But this time, you can trust me."

     He wished he'd brought a flower or a plant or something, looking briefly over at other graves carefully adorned with potted azaleas and chrysanthemums, but he shrugged and turned away, walking down the cemetery slope, careful to notice the time, not wanting to let Peri wait one minute.

    
“
How was your appointment today
?” her father asked, his eyes on the road.

     “Good.”

     “Oh?  How so?”

    P
e
ri
felt the words she would use to explain form in her throat, words like understanding and sorrow and forgiveness, but then she stopped.  He cared again, or maybe he cared for the first time.  Not since she was small and listened to him do crossword puzzles had she felt this—attention, his concern, his one hundred percent awareness of her.  Like she was a person.  Not his child.  Not his crazy child.  His daughter, a woman, part of his life.  Had he ever asked these kinds of questions to her mother?  Did he come home from work and say, “Honey, how was your day?  What happened?”  Peri didn’t know.  She couldn’t remember those hours at the kitchen counter, except in her myopic way.  Her need for him had blotted out everything else.