Conundrum (8 page)

But in that moment at the library, standing there in the microfiche cubicle, I
sensed
a fresh loss, like I’d lost a limb I never knew I
’d
had. I
ached for a father I
’d
never had the opportunity
to know. Maybe
my tumultuous emotions
could be credited to my
displaced grief due to my miscarrying. That was the likely culprit.
And
then I considered:
W
hat if
my mother, in her grief,
felt she
had to shut every door that opened to a memory of my father
?
Maybe that was w
hy she never talked about him. Why we stopped seeing relatives. Maybe that was the only way she could cope and get on with life, raising three children on her own. Who could blame her for that?

Maybe enough time had gone by, and perhaps once I spoke to my uncle and heard his story, I could offer something back to my mother, to my brothers
—
some gift of knowledge that would heal us
and shed some light on the unspoken tragedy that defined and bound our family together, for ill or good
.
Here, perhaps, would be my vorpal sword.

I walked through the solemn halls of the library, imagining swinging my sword against myth and misconception.
One
,
two! One
,
two!
My sword would sing out with truth and revelation, banishing the dark and scary things hiding in the woods of the past.

I
pondered how
in “Jabberwocky”
the reader is
given
a warning
by an unidentified character
“
(Beware the Jabberwock, my son!)
”
and later
:
“
Co
m
e to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Calloh! Callay! He chortled in his joy.
”
It never occurred to me before, but surely th
at
voice belonged to the young champion’s father, who issued warning, and yet followed
up
with joyful praise over his son’s conquering of the
loathsome beast with eyes of flame.

I
had no doubt
that
Raff heard th
at
pointed warning and
quaked
in fear as he faced down his foe.
But he
carried no
vorpal blade,
n
or any weapon that he could fashion against his faceless assailant.
And why did the young
hero’s
father issue such a warning
—to beware the Jabberwock
? Could it have been
framed by
his own
disheartening
experience of defeat?

I pictured our father, dying in a hospital bed, racked with disease
, the monster’s flaming eyes pursuing him through his cold
-
sweat nightmares. My father, impotent in rage and valor
, wallowing in failure
, and my brother standing at his bedside, smelling camphor and death, seeing firsthand the horror of the beast and his own ineluctable fate rushing toward him out of the tulgey wood.

My father’s voice called out from the grave
in challenge and warning:
“
Has thou slain the Jabberwock?
”
But Raff’s answer
of
“
not yet, perhaps never
”
gave no guarantee he’d be welcomed into anyone’s joyful arms.
Or so Raff believed?

I drove home in the dusk, my mind full of imaginings, full of dialogue between me and my cousin,
as I
pictur
ed
a wellspring of information that could fill in the blanks of my life. I pulled up to the house and opened the car door,
the invitation for
Buster and Angel
to
leap on me, their faces overwrought with the nuances of anxiety characteristic of dogs that sense a shift in the security of their home. Usually Jeremy would be there by this time of evening. My menagerie at the barn bellowed and baaed and neighed, a dozen stomach alarms ringing
in distress—as if I ever forgot to feed them.

With the dogs at my heels, I made my rounds, filled feeders with hay and scattered grain on the dirt. I checked on Sassy and watched her triplets push each other off the makeshift teeter-totter Jeremy had b
u
ilt out of a two-by-six plank and a piece of split firewood.
The kids looked robust and energetic, and Sassy seemed settled happily in motherhood, lying with her hooves tucked under her and chewing her cud.

I set my purse down in the kitchen and flipped on lights, trying to discount the ominous silence that filled the house like a thick fluid.
Why was silence so much louder than sound?
The small noises—the clock ticking, the hum of the refrigerator—seemed magnified by Jeremy’s absence
, the house a cavernous echo chamber that hungered for vibration. This would be my third night apart from my husband. We’d taken trips in the past that separated us, but that loneliness was always tempered by the assurance of
reuniting
.

I noticed the red dot flashing on the
answering machine
and pressed the
P
lay button
, my eyes catching on the phone number Jeremy had scribbled
on the notepad
for me, in case I needed to reach him at Daniel’s house
.
Hearing Jeremy’s voice choked me up
,
but I bit my lip and listened
as I spooned dog food into two bowls
. His tone
sounded
tired and harried. I heard people talking in the background. Customers in the store. He wanted to let me know he had swung by
at
noon and dropped off my ring. He didn’t want to risk putting it somewhere and forgetting.

Forgetting what? The ring, or our relationship?

I pressed
S
top
,
walked over to the sink
,
and to
o
k the ring off the windowsill, where it
lay
next to the soap dish.
I slipped it on
my finger
as I walked over to the TV in the living room, where I flipped channels until I found something innocuous on the Turner Classics station. I recognized Marilyn Monroe and Richard Widmark, talking in hushed voices in a hotel room.
I turned the sound up, then settled onto the couch
—
open invitation for my dogs to flank me. They
hopped onto the comfy cushions,
smell
ing
like Alpo Beef
,
and made sure my arms received lots of slobbery licks before they squirmed
around and settled with sighs
by my side.

Marilyn Monroe grew dreamy, lost in memory over her fiancé, who had disappeared in a plane over the ocean. Apparently she was a bit confused, thinking Richard Widmark
—
a total stranger she had invited into her room
—
was
her
l
o
st
love
.
I watched the rest of the movie, which involved some nosy
,
suspicious neighbors
;
a little girl
bound and
tied
in
the next room
;
and a smarmy house
detective
. In the end, though, Marilyn’s mental state had deteriorated such that the police had to cart her off to the loony bin
.
The apparent result of living in denial.
If only she
had
just accept
ed
the truth—
that s
he would never see her l
over again—then she wouldn’t have lost her marbles.
I decided I really disliked that movie, whatever it was called.

Fortunately,
The
African Queen
was on next
. At least Humphrey Bogart took fate in both hands,
albeit in the shape of a bottle,
drinking whiskey until he passed out. And
this movie
had a happy ending, despite
his
ship blowing up
. In the wreckage and flotsam, he
had
at least found love. I liked to believe he and Kate lived happily ever after, now that the Germans had been thwarted.

See, I told myself,
giving a nod to Bogey,
love can survive untold tribulation—even Nazis.
Surely, Jeremy and I would work all this out.

Surely.

Chapter
5

I set my alarm to wake up early,
so
as the sun streaked dawn across the
dew-laced
pasture out my kitchen window and
my water boiled for tea
, I called New York. My uncle’s service picked up and said they’d rel
a
y my message, that he was busy with a patient.
After a few directed calls, I located someone with the Bar Association
who
gave me an office number for Mandy Gl
e
ssman.
I was surprised when
she
picked up on the first ring.

I don’t know whom I expected—someone lawyerlike, with a detached manner and a cool East Coast accent perhaps. But as soon as I introduced myself and
briefly
explained the reason I called, she gushed with excitement
and colorful expletives
.
Mandy
pummeled me with question after question: where did I live, what line of work was I in, did I have a family, what did I look like. Her enthusiasm ignited my own
,
and soon we were chatting like friends who hadn’t seen each other in years. I told her I
had
called to reconnect, that I didn’t have much family, but I
decided to avoid elaborating on
the
topic
of suicidal depression and related
issues
this early in the game
.

“
Man, m
y dad will be so thrilled to hear you’ve called. I think he’s always been a bit sad that he didn’t get to watch his niece and nephews grow up.”

“He knew about us? My brothers and me?”

“Sure.
For heaven’s sake!
He’s even got pictures in the photo album.
A cute one of Neal—boy, was he a butterball. And your dad playing catch with Rafferty.
”

Pictures. I thought
of
the two lone photos I’d seen of my father. Mandy continued. “Let’s see, I’m the same age as Rafferty, and the last time we were out in California was for your dad’s funeral.” Her voice dropped in energy
,
and I sensed her take a long breath. “So,
I was about eight. And you were, what, five?”

“Four,” I said, trying hard to recall a visit from her family. “I don’t remember.”

“Sure, you probably we
re
too young.
I remember flying over the huge groves of orange trees as the plane came down to land. I even saw the Matterhorn—you know, the mountain at Disneyland—outside my little round window. That was a kick.
I thought the snow was real and was amazed it didn’t melt in the sun. Funny, huh? The things we remember.”

My memory was a fishing net that
snagged on
odd unwanted bits of information, but had huge holes where the important events of my life slipped through. For instance, why on earth would I remember the license plate of my mother’s blue Corvair
from twenty years ago
—JLW 671
?
Or our
first
phone number back in Mill Valley
pre
–
area codes
: 78
9
-
954
1? In fact, if I dredged hard enough, I could recite every phone number from every place I’d
ever
lived. Maybe Raff and I got those uncanny skills from our mathematician father. We were both weird with numbers that way.

Neal never shared our fanatical interest in numbers and
had
almost
failed math, where Raff and I excelled. Maybe Neal couldn’t take the heat of competition,
for
Raff and I faced off plenty of times in
con
tests of numeric prowess.
Even though I was four years behind Raff in school, I
sometimes
had the advantage of speed in my recollection of utterly useless bits of information.
We must have driven Neal crazy, for he manifested
the
only sane response to our behavior—
mediocrity.
Rather than wither beneath our towering shadows, he
’d
glued himself to the TV
, watching
mind-numbing episodes of
Speed Racer
and
Gumby
.
He sailed through school with average grades, attracting no attention, getting in no trouble. No one expected much from him
,
and he seemed content with invisibility. Except for baseball, his passion. He wanted more than anything to be a pitcher
o
n his Little League team, but couldn’t make the cut. Settling for second base
man
was the
nadir
of his life’s disappointments. What I would have given to trade his miseries for mine.