Crossroads (23 page)

I curled up next to the window and looked into pea soup. Sean patted my arm but I curled closer to the window. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to one phone call. When Mark and I fought, he read me my rights. Mark once said I exhibited the personality traits of a hostage. Nervousness and a tendency to overreact. I'd been raised like a hostage, a prisoner of my own family. Go ahead, I said to myself, move to California. See if I care.

There is something unnerving about the state of California. Thomas Mann said it was the only place on earth where man could not live. He wasn't referring to the fact that it could crack off and become an island at any time. Rather, he must have somehow sensed that this was all temporary, brutish, without discipline. Those oversized trees, that not so pacific ocean crashing against its rocky shore, hundreds of feet below, as we took the hairpin turns, with Roxanne, sick as she was, saying over and over again, “Gorgeous, gorgeous.” In the fog there wasn't much to see, but Roxanne was determined to make the experience a positive one. “Boy, you can sure get into a rut. You know, you live here all your life and you never know how beautiful it is. You can get into a rut.”

It was somewhere along that great, obscured highway that I sank into a rut of impenetrable silence. Men were destined to leave me. I knew that now. Everyone has his or her fate and this would be mine.

Sean suddenly pulled off the highway and parked the car. He got out and beckoned for me to do the same. He put his arm around me and walked me to a spot that indicated we'd have a view if we weren't in dense fog. “Would you please tell me what is going on?”

“I don't like the people we're traveling with.”

He sighed. “Is that true?”

“No, not really. They're all right.” Art and Roxanne looked at us, shaking their heads from the car. They had, after all, made it through two years and I think we must have made them feel they'd been through twenty-two. “I don't know what it is. Everything is all wrong.”

“Is it Mark? Are you thinking about him again?”

I shook my head. “I'm thinking about you. I'm thinking about the fact that you're moving west, that I don't know where you'll be next. I was doing all right until you came along. I was fine on my own. But you made me decide what kind of ice cream I wanted. You started spending time with me and asking me to travel with you. And now you're just going to leave . . .”

“They have cities in California, don't they?”

“I just can't pick up and move like that. It isn't so easy.”

He put his hands in the pocket of his jeans. “Remember I told you once that if I touch a table, I want to feel the wood, and if I touch a lamp, I want to feel the heat of the lamp. And with a woman, or any person, I want that person to be there. Well, you're just such a jumble of things. And I'm having trouble making my way through it all. I'm not a complicated person, Deborah, and I don't think I'm difficult to get along with.” He paused. “I just don't know if we can be lovers anymore. There are too many obstacles now.”

Roxanne and Art watched us from the car. They looked incredibly bored. “But I think I'm in love with you,” I managed to say.

“I really care about you, Debbie. I really do and probably I love you too. I know there was a time when I would have done almost anything to be with you, and I'm still your friend but this just isn't working.”

“Is it because you came in that night when I was with Mark?”

He shook his head. “It's because you aren't ready for anything and I can't make you trust me if you don't trust anybody.”

“But you said we wouldn't talk about the future . . .”

He took a deep breath. “All right. We won't. We'll take it as it comes.”

“We won't make any decisions, right? We'll just see what happens.” He nodded and looked away distractedly, eyes fixed below on the valley. It was at that moment that the fog chose to part, and for an instant I saw, rising out of the clouds, the bridges, the buildings, the skyline, the bay of San Francisco, a city I'd never seen before, which looked to me from where we stood like some Shangri-la, more like someone's dream of a city than a real place at all.

 

We crossed the rust-red Golden Gate Bridge, holding hands, and dropped Art and Roxanne off at his sister's place, agreeing to meet them for drinks at lunchtime the next day at Seal Point. Sean and I checked into the Union Square and decided to walk around the city. We went to Chinatown and I bought him some slippers and wind chimes. We walked down the crookedest street in the world and over to the marina. At the marina two sea lions poked their heads out of the water as they swam and dived for fish from the fishing boats. It was already getting dark, but I could see their sleek bodies, shimmering in the gaslight of the harbor, their noses as they peered from the water. I watched as they swam diagonally from one another, bodies almost grazing but not quite, passing one another in smooth, graceful passes, and then they were gone.

I wondered where they went at night. Zap told me once that scientists went eight miles down into the ocean in a special pressurized cabin. I didn't know how deep you could go, but Zap said the ocean just seemed to go deeper and deeper. He told me how they'd found little bubbling volcanoes, giant sea worms, flowers, and strangely beautiful anemones that con
verted darkness into food, but disintegrated when you brought them up into the light.

We went to a noisy Chinese restaurant for dim-sin. “Shall we keep driving north?” I asked him after we sat down. I wanted to plan the rest of our trip.

“I can't think about that now. Let's order something.” But he couldn't get the waiter's attention. When he finally got the waiter, who was already annoyed with him for his impatience, Sean wanted explanations and recommendations, which the waiter didn't feel like giving. The dim-sin wasn't as varied as he'd hoped it would be. The Chinese beer was warm. “God, and this used to be a good place.”

“Let's just have a nice dinner,” I offered, holding his hand.

“How can you have a nice dinner in a lousy restaurant?”

I'd lived too many years with my father to believe Sean was upset about the restaurant. “Do you want to talk about something?” I asked him as we were finishing our first course.

He nodded, looking a little relieved. “Let's just get the bill and go for a walk,” he said. We walked, mostly in silence, down to the piers. We walked with Sean staring at his feet, at my hand, staring at the sky. Finally he said, “Deb, I tried, I really did, but I can't go on. I'm sorry. You were right. I never got over that night I walked in and saw your clothes lying on the floor. I don't know what to say. I really can't get it out of my head. And I can't live with it.”

The water was very dark and in the fog, which hadn't lifted, it looked eerie, as if you could glide across it. “You know I was having a hard time.”

“Look, I want some distance. I want some time apart.”

I begged him as I'd rarely begged anyone for anything in my life. “Please,” I said, “don't do this. Not now. Please. I just wanted three nice days with you. That's all I want. Please, please.” I started kissing him, on the mouth, the neck, on the hands. “Please,” I begged, “let's walk back to the hotel. Let's go to bed. Please.”

He put an arm tightly around me and we walked back to the hotel. We brushed past the desk clerk and on up into the room. When we got upstairs, I kissed him again. “I'm going to make love to you,” I said. He sat down on the edge of the bed and I pushed him back. I knelt by his feet and undid his shoes. I pulled off his socks. I unbuttoned his pants, his shirt. And when he was naked, I let my tongue roll down along his neck to his nipples and I sucked on his nipples as he closed his eyes. I pressed my hips against him and rubbed my belly against his penis.

Then I reached down with my hand and took a firm grip on him. With my tongue, I rolled down his chest, down his belly, my head moving in swirling motions, and then I put him in my mouth and I sucked on him. A drop of sperm came to the top of his penis and I wiped it in a circle with my finger. I ran my mouth up and down and he gripped my head with his hands.

When he came he pulled me up to him and kissed me. “Lie down,” he said. He had me sit upright against some pillows and he began to move his tongue in long, drawn-out strokes. And then he dipped his finger inside and, while his tongue flicked, his finger turned slowly. And just when I was ready, he pulled back and stuck a pillow under my hips.

He had me arched high, and slowly, steadily he made love to me. Then when I was so wet I could hardly feel him any longer, he rolled over and pulled me on top of him. “This is how I want you,” he told me.

“I don't know if I can,” I said.

“Try.” His hands reached up for my breasts. He massaged my nipples and then, when he saw I was getting excited again, he reached a hand down and massaged me. “I've got plenty of time,” he said. I tightened my muscles, rested my hands on the headboard, and moved on top of him, moving faster and faster, until I felt myself starting to come. “I'm coming,” I said. And he reached up for me. “I know,” he said, “so am I.”

I rolled over and rested on the pillow and Sean put his head on my belly. It took me a few moments to realize that the vibrations in his body were not the aftershocks of sex but rather sobs. I rubbed his head. “What on earth is the matter?”

“Why didn't you want me,” he cried, “when I wanted you?”

 

When I woke in the morning, he was packing. “What are you doing?”

“I'm leaving. I'm going back to Los Angeles. This is just not working out for me.”

I tried to be rational, certain I could talk him out of it. “But we're supposed to meet your friends at Seal Point for drinks.” For some reason I was sure he might want to leave me but wouldn't want to be rude.

“You go in my place.”

I shot out of bed. “Go in your place? I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask you to follow me all over town. I mean, you don't just walk out on someone. What's the matter with you?”

“Debbie, I love you. I think I really do. Something is just not right for us. I wish I'd met you later.” He picked up his bag, walked to the door, and suddenly he was gone.

I grabbed a robe, threw it on, and dashed into the hall. “Please don't go. Don't leave me. I can't stand being alone. I can't take it now.”

He went with me back into the room. “I'm not sure I can make you see this, but I have problems of my own. Problems that have nothing to do with you. I need some time to think it out as well, but I'm not abandoning you.”

“I beg your pardon, but you're leaving me in a hotel room in a strange city in the fog. If that's not abandonment, what is?”

I knew I'd turned away from Sean when he really wanted me. And now I was condemned to want him the most when he wanted me the least. It was all so incredibly stupid. It seemed as if I'd never lived one moment, breathed one breath, without
wanting a man, some man, to put his hand on my head and give me life. I have sought explanations and revenge. I could have killed my husband when I learned he'd betrayed me.

I've tried to make, out of this amorphous mess of life we're given, something that bordered on sense, something within my grasp. But in the end I have loved only gentle failures like my brother, successful tyrants like my father, smart women who were bundles of doubt and fear. I have journeyed between weakness and strength, kindness and power, and I know that it is not easy to be a woman and it is not easy to be a man and all we can really do is the best we can.

“I think you're right,” I said to him at last. “I guess I need some time too.” He kissed me and said we'd see one another again. That some distance would do us good. But I sensed we wouldn't see one another again.

I called Art and Roxanne and told them what had happened, and they insisted I come over and spend the day with them. “No, I think I'll just try to get a flight out.” I sat on the edge of the bed, numb. When Sean had closed the door behind him, I'd held my breath, thinking he'd open it again before I fainted, but he hadn't opened it again and I'd started to cry.

“Come on,” Roxanne said. “Just come over. Get out of there.”

The disconsolate desk clerk at our hotel seemed immune to my frenzy as, teary-eyed, I asked him to call me a cab. In the taxi over to Art's sister's place, I asked the driver what the weather would be the next day, when I planned to leave. “It's going to snow,” he said.

“Snow?”

“Yeah, a real blizzard.”

“That's what the radio said?”

“Lady, you didn't ask me what the radio said. You asked me what the weather would be. Why do people always take cabbies for granted? What am I supposed to do? Listen to the radio all day long, give everybody the weather?”

When I arrived, Art handed me a glass of warm ginger ale. “Tough break, kid,” he said. The weather outside was still terrible and they didn't want to go anywhere. They thought a game of Class Struggle would cheer me up. I was the worker. Art was a farmer and Roxanne was a capitalist. The purpose of the game was to prepare for struggle in a capitalist society. “I don't think I'm in the mood, Art,” I said, but he said it would take my mind off things. I drew a “Prepare to Negotiate” card and fought back the tears. Art could merge and wanted to merge with me, but I had a plea bargain and could work out a deal with industry if I wanted to wait, which I wanted to do, but then I learned the class struggle was progressing and I had to move immediately to a confrontation square.

I finally convinced Roxanne we should go to Seal Point, but Art was more difficult. “We aren't going to be able to see a damn thing,” he argued. “This fog can drive you nuts.”

“Well, we're going to go nuts sitting inside all day,” Roxanne argued back.