Autobiography of Us (13 page)

* * *

It must have been Friday of that same week when I heard Alex’s voice floating up from the foyer sometime in the afternoon. I went straight out into the hallway and leaned over the banister, straining to hear. “Goodness, yes, it’s a wonderful opportunity,” my mother was saying. “She’s just over the moon, though of course she’ll be sorry to have missed you. She’s been busy as anything these last few days.” I tiptoed down as far as the third stair from the top. My mother’s back came into view first, then Alex’s shoes—a pair of low red heels I had always envied her terribly—pressed together so her ankles touched. I braved another stair, my heart pounding. But when Alex’s gaze met mine, she didn’t so much as flinch. Her eyes flicked my way and I—I froze where I was, half standing, half not. I kept waiting for her to raise her finger and point or smile or start across the hall, announcing in her marvelous voice that under no circumstances could I leave, that she would lie down across the doorway if she had to, sorry, Mrs. M., but Italy, my ass, she didn’t buy that story for a second.

But she did nothing of the sort. Her eyes slid back to my mother; she smiled casually, pushing a piece of hair back behind her ear. I understood in that moment that she must have guessed the real reason behind my leaving, that she had come to my house in order to confirm her suspicions. If her hunch had been wrong and I had, as my mother claimed, decided to go halfway across the world on a whim, I would have rushed down the stairs to meet her, eager for reconciliation. It was a test; I’d failed. The truth, she would report back to the other girls, worse than any of them had dreamed.
Knocked up
,
no question
, she would announce, savoring the drama.
Exeunt, Rebecca
.

I did not go back into my room after I retreated. I went instead to the window in my parents’ room and waited until Alex emerged, crossing our short driveway with her unhurried stroll. She’d almost reached the hedges when she turned. It was the strangest thing. I’d never seen what the other girls said sometimes, that the two of us looked alike—in certain lighting, Betsy might say kindly, to soften the obvious blow. I didn’t see it any more than Bertrand Lowell had. But when she turned that afternoon and lifted her gaze to the front of our house, I saw my own face looking back.

It was fear that changed her face into something like mine. Like a veil thrown over her head, it dimmed her beauty, shaping her features into an expression I recognized right away. For all my careful work, I had never learned to mask the dread I felt at every turn—fear that someone would discover my mother’s stitching in one of my dresses, fear that someone would catch me coming out of McCarren Hall, fear that any one of my many failings would be discovered and I would be sent, like an orphan from one of my childhood novels, back to the dull little world I’d inhabited before Alex came along. In all my years of knowing her, I had never seen her look afraid of anything. I waited—stupidly—for her to wave or smile or laugh. But she did nothing of the sort, only stood for a moment looking up at the window with that same awful expression before turning and disappearing behind the hedges.

* * *

She was halfway down the block by the time I reached her.
“Quelle surprise,”
she said as she turned, not looking surprised at all. “I was told the lady of the house wasn’t home.”

“It was all a mistake,” I said determinedly, putting a hand on her arm; she glanced down at it with mild astonishment. “I drank too much. I’m not used to drinking that much—”

“Zip it, please.”

“I never meant for anything to happen. This has all been a terrible misunderstanding—”

She pulled away. “Not in the mood.”

“If you’d just let me explain—”

“Florence is lovely this time of year,” she said in a loud voice. “I hear
Il Duomo
is magnificent.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “It’s Nevada, for your information. And supposedly it’s hot as hell.”

She blinked. “I can’t imagine what you mean.”

“I said it was a mistake.”

“A rather big one,” she said pointedly.

I drew a line across the pavement with my toe. “You’re still angry.”

“I prefer
incensed
.
Lit on fire.
Speaks volumes, don’t you think?”

“I’m sure the nuns will tell me I’ll burn for my sins.”

“Speaking of fire.”

“Weren’t we?”

“I don’t know anymore,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height. “I honestly don’t.”

A chipmunk chattered noisily from somewhere within the hedges; far away, a car horn blared.

“I’ve been busy as anything, in case you were wondering,” she went on. “In case you think this whole thing has been all about you. Auditions start this winter for all the big shows—Broadway, et cetera—and I’ve been working like a dog. Speeches, primarily. High time I expanded my repertoire. Not to mention every so often you come across something really compelling.”

She seemed to be waiting. “Oh?”

“By the law, I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it,”
she recited. “Anne Boleyn on the executioner’s block—1536, I believe it was. Facing the ax, not the flames.” She put her hands to her throat. “Speaking of incensed. She must have been angry as hell, but there she stood, waiting for the blade to fall. Preaching forgiveness.”

My head had begun to throb lightly. “She must have thought she was being a good Christian. She must have—”

She stepped forward before I registered the movement and pressed her hand down over my mouth. Her palm was warm and slightly damp and smelled of cigarettes. “I have always found strength in the face of adversity,” she said slowly, “to be among the most admirable of traits.” She was so close now I could see the variegated greens of her eyes, the paler spots floating in among the darker tones so light they were nearly yellow. “There’s nothing I like less than a coward.”

“I’m doing the best I can.” My voice came out muffled, the words garbled, indistinct.

She dropped her hand. “Who said I was talking about you?”

I shook my head, shaking off the pressure of her palm against my mouth, the sour taste of her skin. “I leave Tuesday.”

“Nebraska, did you say?”

“Nevada.”

“Quite the adventure.”

“I’d hardly call it that.”

“I don’t know. A girl like you could get in all kinds of trouble on her way to Nevada.” She shifted where she stood, foot to foot. “So this is
bon voyage
or whatever.
Buon viaggio.
”

“Something like that.”

“Any parting requests?” She raised her eyebrows. “Come on, there must be something.”

I bit my lip. “Tell me everything will turn out alright in the end.”

“Everything will turn out alright in the end.” She grinned. “How was that?”

“Spectacular, thanks.”

“Sorry,” she said airily. “Look, all I know for sure is that none of us knows a damn thing.”

“And your Anne Boleyn?”

She gazed at me thoughtfully. “Bingo,” she said. “She knew precisely what was coming. Fat lot of good it did her.” She leaned forward and tapped her finger to my nose. “Watch your head,” she said. “Afraid that’s all I’ve got.”

IT was hot on the bus to the convent. By nine or so the sun burned through the windows, the seat under my legs damp with sweat. I would have liked to roll my stockings down right then and there, never mind about the other passengers; instead, I sat with my suitcase tucked under my feet, staring out the window as we drove through the Sierras. We climbed for what felt like hours, the bus groaning as we came out the other side and began our slow descent, winding down toward desert that stretched as far as the eye could see. Heat shimmered in the air like a thin wash of mercury, the sky liquid or nearly so, everything on the verge of melting.

The convent was just outside a town called Jackson, a town that turned out to be an intersection of four roads and a row of low one-story buildings that stopped as quickly as they began. My mother had written down the directions from the nuns on a slip of paper I took from my pocket and examined there in the dusty lot, my suitcase resting against my shins.
Look for Main Street
, the note read.
Take the street that runs perpendicular to it, LAGUNA.
This she had underlined,
LAGUNA
, and I stared at the word as I started off across the lot, trying to pull from the letters some trace of the affection that had guided her hand to draw that line. To her offer to accompany me on the trip out, I had said no, no thank you. Better I should go alone, I said. Less attention that way. Though no sooner had I taken my seat on the bus than I found myself wishing I had answered otherwise or that she had seen through my protest to my desperation, the need for someone to hold my hand and chatter about nothing as we wound our way through the mountains.

Laguna turned out to be not much more than a trail that led off Main Street, a rocky path meandering up a steep hill I might have missed easily had I not been walking so slowly, suitcase bumping against my knees. I must have climbed a good ten or fifteen minutes at least before the walls of the convent appeared in the distance, the stones in the afternoon sun giving off a cold red light. I saw when I got closer that the walls were crumbling here and there, tufted in places with the straggling grass ends of what looked to be birds’ nests. The sign that marked the entrance was covered with a fine layer of dust. I stood for a moment, breathless from the climb. I let my suitcase drop to the ground with a thud and went up on tiptoe to get a look at the building itself. There wasn’t much to see. The walls were high and the convent built low to the ground. I sank back onto my heels, and then I did something I can explain only as a kind of desperation. I reached out with my index finger and dragged a line through the dust covering the black lettering on the sign, crossing it out.
ST. JUDE’S
.

No sooner did I drop my hand than I turned abruptly and started back toward town. I went down Main Street and found a motel just half a block or so from where the bus had stopped. It was the kind of place people slept in only because they were passing through on their way to somewhere else, because they had to sleep or else they might die. The desk clerk hardly glanced up from her magazine as I counted out a few bills from the envelope my mother had given me and slid them across the counter. The light in the hallway was dim, the paint peeling off the ceiling in strips. The room, needless to say, was dismal. I remember that the quilt covering the bed was a hideous green, bilious and stained in patches by God knows what. I dropped my suitcase on the floor and stepped out of my shoes, too tired to bother with my clothes. The last thing I remember before drifting off is a fly crawling up the windowpane on the far wall, its body like a spot of ink beading against the glass.

It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that the appointment I called to make the next day was illegal. This was 1965; far less had changed than people choose to remember. I was dimly aware of how steady my hands stayed as I dialed information, how clear my voice rang as I navigated the operator’s requests. She gave me the number and address of a hospital in Fresno and somehow I managed, alternately bullying and pleading with a strength anyone who knew me would have been astonished to witness, to get the information I needed. I lied over the phone as though I’d been doing it my whole life. I lied to that nurse or receptionist, whoever she was, and I lied to the driver on the bus I rode the next morning back through the Sierras, the sky an ominous swell of clouds. I lied to the doctor the next morning in Fresno; in retrospect I understand he must have heard a thousand stories just like mine. He must have had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing when I murmured something about a family friend, a married man with children of his own. The shame of it, I said, too much to bear.

II

EVERY evening that summer the local weatherman on the radio announced a new high: one hundred degrees, one hundred one, one-oh-two. We were advised to stay indoors and mostly did, the house noisy with the clicking of all the ceiling fans. Water was restricted across the city. As a result, the hedges that bordered the front of our property wilted and turned yellow, the narrow strip of lawn that flanked our front steps drying until it crackled underfoot. The heat kept the phoebes quiet until evening, when they started up a stream of whistles, a high, thin noise like the sound of children playing.

It came as a shock to realize I had never made my mother angry before. Oh, she’d gotten impatient with me—little things, when I was slow to carry out some task around the house or I forgot to do something she had asked me any number of times to do. But her anger that summer hit like strong weather: It was everywhere all at once. Remember that to earn a decent living in our community was not enough. To be kind and good, to work diligently and with integrity, was not enough. My mother’s silk flowers
à la
Neiman’s, her chicken paillard, never mind my father and all his years of work at the firm, his regular attendance at church—none of it was enough. We were holding on by our fingernails, my parents might have told me, if we had ever spoken of such things. We were only ever hanging by a thread.

But everything that hot, windless summer went unspoken. My mother’s anger took the form of silence, a deep freeze that left the house echoey with all the small noises of the day—the water running in the sink, the thud of the mailman dropping his delivery through the slot, that
click-click-click
of the fans. Overnight, her sense of industry disappeared, her latest project involving the lamp shades abandoned, her sewing put away in a drawer somewhere. At meals, her hands lay still in her lap or else fiddled idly with something, rolling a fork or a pen or a scrap of paper against the table. The garden she left to the elements, her roses wilting within days and dying. Gone were the carefully prepared casseroles, the terrines, the recipes clipped and clothespinned to the cookbook stand; gone was the art of presentation, the smile, the
ta-da!
Dinner was invariably something cold—tuna salad or hard-boiled eggs with deviled ham, the vase on the table that had once held a steady rotation of flowers left conspicuously empty. Mornings, I often emerged from my room to find her sitting on the living room couch with a blouse or skirt lying untouched in her lap, her expression unreadable, or else I overheard her telling my father after breakfast that she had one of her headaches and not to bother her, to please be sure to pull the bedroom door closed behind him when he left.