Panorama City (25 page)

 

I rode through warm and humid evening air into town, into your mother's old neighborhood, she doesn't want me talking about this, but I don't trust her to tell you, it is important, it is where you come from, Juan-George. It was dark but there were people on the streets, people making the most of the warm night, they were barbecuing and drinking, they were playing loud music. I pulled my bicycle up onto the lawn and leaned it against the house. Carmen's roommate's son Fabio was sitting on the porch in the same place he'd been sitting forty days before, but this time he was asleep with an empty bottle of beer next to him. I knocked, the door opened from me knocking on it. I entered the house, there was garbage everywhere, nobody had cleaned in a long while. Which was odd, from what I had seen before, your mother was a tidy person, this was what they call a disaster zone and it was dark, too, none of the lights were on. I went into your mother's room and saw two bodies on the bed, a man and a woman, doing what men and women do. The man didn't see me, he was facing the other way, but the woman looked up immediately. She was not your mother. I asked her where Carmen was, the man turned around and asked what was going on. The woman said that Carmen had moved out, and the man said to me, Can't you see I'm fucking here? Which was how I learned that your mother had left her house, had left the house she had been renting, I later discovered, because her roommate's habits had become, her words, too risky, which meant drugs, your mother always avoided drugs. I woke Fabio, I asked him if he knew where Carmen had gone, he had no idea. Which was when I found out he hadn't told her I was coming back, which was when I found out Fabio had told Carmen only that I'd come by to say
adiós,
and that I'd been with another woman, instead of telling her that I'd gone away to become a man of the world, instead of telling her that the woman I was with was Officer Mary, instead of telling her that I hoped she would wait for me, that I would keep her in my heart, that I would return for her, the only thing he'd passed on was
adiós
.

 

Late the next morning I was moving furniture around, I was trying to figure out how I was going to change the house,
now that it was mine, I mean, but I was lost, Juan-George, I had no routine. You should know by now, if you've been listening carefully, or even not so carefully, that most problems can be solved by waiting. If I'd been in town, looking for your mother, if I'd been driving around with Officer Mary, asking people questions, trying to find your mother, if I'd taken a day to track down and visit her family somewhere else in the Central Valley I would not have been home when she appeared on my front porch just before noon, peering through the dusty windows, calling my name. She called me, she still calls me, instead of Oppen, she's the only one who calls me Open, like what you do to a door, I decided that day not to correct her. Hello, she said, Open, are you home? I was. Fabio had told her I was back, she said, and looking for her. She came in, I let her in, and together we sat on the sofa in the living room. I asked if she wanted anything to drink, I offered her tap water or warm soda, I apologized and explained that the electricity hadn't been turned on yet, I hadn't gone into town yet to sort that out. She asked how long I'd been back. I told her I'd just arrived the night before. She asked me if I had come looking for her even before going to PG&E. I told her I hadn't come back to Madera to pay an electric bill. And what about the police woman? she asked. She's not your lover? I explained to Carmen that Officer Mary was my friend, only my friend, and that she had helped me a great deal, and that she was still helping me. Carmen squinted at me and then asked if she could have
a soda. I opened one for her, even opening it I could tell it had gone flat, she took a sip and put it down on the coffee table. I asked her how it was and she said it was disgusting, which is something I love about your mother, she tells the truth. I asked her where she was living now, she said she'd rather not say, it wasn't a good place. It was safer than with her old roommate, but it wasn't good. She shifted her body side to side on the sofa, I couldn't tell if she was making herself comfortable or getting ready to stand up. My mouth went dry, and my throat felt like I had half-swallowed a pill, and I knew I had reached one of those points in life where any event no matter how small could happen a different way and change everything that follows. I looked at your mother, I tilted my head down to look her directly in the eyes, and she looked up at me, she met my gaze, as they say, and that look, the two of us exchanging that look, neither of us looking away, gave me the courage to mention that there was extra room in the house and that she was welcome to stay if she wished. I told her I'd have the electricity connected again soon, and the telephone, and that I was still in the process of rearranging the furniture to my liking, and that I'd accept any ideas from her, but she was welcome, she would be welcome here. She smiled, her white teeth and gold teeth all showing, and then laughed. I wasn't sure why she was laughing and waited for her to finish. Enough, she said, you don't have to be a salesman about it. Which meant yes, which was her way of saying yes. Later she would say that it was the beginning of her new life. She's staring blades at me now, Juan-George, I wouldn't be surprised if she erased this part of the tape, your mother has always been a very private person, I hope she won't erase this, what could be better than the beginning of a new life?

 

She helped me fix up the house, she cleaned with me, together we moved things around. And outside, too, she wanted to landscape the yard, she is not as committed as I am to preserving wilderness. She cleared a little rectangle of land, for a vegetable garden, we've eaten cucumbers and tomatoes from it, it's surprisingly satisfying to grow your own food, but the rest of the land remains wild, remains a patch of wilderness. Your mother lost the battle of the wilderness, as she calls it, but she won the battle of your grandfather's room, which wasn't exactly a battle, but I had locked the door to his room and had thereby declared it off limits to any cleaning or rearranging. But once the rest of the house was done, and after the garden was planted, your mother pointed out that we couldn't leave the room locked forever. At that time I was still sleeping on my bed, and your mother was sleeping on the sofa downstairs, which was where she said she felt most comfortable. Emptying your grandfather's bedroom of all his things was like emptying the container that had held him my whole life. I took many breaks to breathe my own air, Juan-George, and your mother let me. She let me, then she'd come find me and tell me to get back to work, she couldn't move everything on her own. Finally one day the room was clean and empty, just some walls and windows and a floor and ceiling, and it seemed as though no one had ever lived in it. Like Tupperware that had just come out of the dishwasher, no sign of leftovers. Which was when Carmen declared that the room could use a bed, a brand-new bed. We went all the way to Fresno, we took her car. At the mattress store, she lay down on mattress after mattress until she found one she liked. I checked to see that it was long enough for me, which it was. She argued with the salesman for a long time about the price, until neither of them seemed happy, and then we paid. The bed was delivered the next day, and we put fresh sheets and pillows on it. That night, we slept in the bed, together, we slept in that room for the first time. We slept in it every night after. We did all this without talking about it, without discussion, which is like when mosquitoes synchronize their wings, which is a symptom of love.

 

We walked together in town, your mother and I, we liked to take walks around Madera, and I noticed right away that the atmosphere was not the same awkward and lonely atmosphere it had been right after I had buried your grandfather the first time, no, the atmosphere was friendly, and welcoming, everyone said that they had missed having me around. I think your mother had something to do with it, I don't know, she won't talk about it. We must have been quite a sight, Juan-George, I am much taller than your mother, she is much shorter and rounder than I am, I wore my regular T-shirts with Madera businesses on them and she wore the clothing she'd always worn, nothing wrong with showing off her assets, her words, and yet nobody made jokes, I'd expected jokes, but nobody greeted us with anything but warmth. It was strange, I was no longer exactly a shield, I was something else, and your mother was something else too. I wondered, I remember wondering, if that something else was a man of the world, if people looked at me now and saw a man of the world. I had gone, and I had returned. They asked about my travels, I told them about Panorama City. And I realized that despite all the missteps and unintended consequences my plan had come to fruition. The proof was in the fact that everyone called me Oppen, not Mayor. Or almost everyone, the Alvarez brothers were still in the habit of calling me Mayor, as was Greg Yerkovich, but we were such old friends I could understand it.

 

Then something happened that we hadn't planned, exactly, but not planned against either. By which I mean that we found out your mother was pregnant with you. We laughed at our good fortune, she can tell you about how excited we were to find out you were coming, she had always assumed that she would never be a mother, could never be a mother, maybe she thought she was too old, I don't know, she had her reasons. As soon as we found out, we began the process of converting my old room into your new room. You will be a boy where I was a boy, Juan-George. Which reminds me, in the back of the garage there is a bicycle, I have set it aside, it has training wheels, when you are big enough you can learn to ride it. There are also several acceptable bicycles for when you are older, Carmen knows where they are, and Wilfredo can tell you everything about riding them. Maybe one of those bicycles will become to you like my blue-flake three-speed was to me, not just a mode of transport, not just a way to get from A to B to C, as they say, but an extension of yourself, a tool so familiar and comfortable that it seems almost a part of you, so that its presence goes unnoticed, what they call second nature, when using it becomes so natural you hardly know you're using it at all, like a shoe that fits.

 

You were present at your grandfather's third burial, you were in your mother's womb, it was still too soon to know whether you'd be a girl or a boy, we hadn't named you yet, but you were there. First, we had to go into Madera. Or actually, first, we had to navigate oceans of paperwork, with the help of Officer Mary, help your mother didn't think we needed but which turned out to be instrumental in getting your grandfather out from the ground between the Kutchinskis and the Browns. The makeshift coffin I'd made for him ended up going straight into the crematorium. The mortuary worker wore a permanent look of sadness and sympathy on his face but couldn't seem to keep the details straight, his mind was elsewhere, it was a mask, he had landed himself in the wrong job. When we were done signing and paying he handed us a cardboard box containing your grandfather's ashes. I opened the box immediately, I don't know why, and looked inside. I'm not sure what I expected to see, I think something about the worker hadn't made me feel confident, and I wanted to make sure it really was your grandfather. Of course, I knew I would only see fine gray powder, like at the bottom of a fireplace that hasn't been cleaned out. There was fine powder, but there were also bits of white stuff, which the mortuary worker said was bone, and some longer narrow blackened pieces, which, he explained, were the nails that had held together the makeshift coffin.

 

We returned from the crematorium to find Freddy at the house, Freddy my friend from Madera with one leg shorter than the other, he had taken the day off and brought his mini-excavator with him. And Wilfredo was there, too, I recognized his truck as we pulled into the driveway so it wasn't a total surprise. He had made a marker for your grandfather's grave, along with two others, he and Freddy had installed them. In a row, in polished granite: Ajax, Atlas, George Porter. When I saw the markers for your grandfather and his hunting dogs I couldn't contain my feelings, your mother put her arms around me, she wrapped her arms around me and leaned her head against my chest, against the side of my chest, against my ribs, it was better than breathing my own air. Freddy had already dug the grave, he had already made a hole for your grandfather's final resting place, he had made the hole as big as the hole I'd made the day I first buried your grandfather, nobody had told him about the cremation, nobody had told him we wouldn't be burying a coffin but only a small cardboard box.

 

You were there, Freddy was there, Wilfredo, your mother and I, Officer Mary, a few others. When everyone was ready I went to put the box into your grandfather's grave. But the hole was too deep, I couldn't reach the bottom, and I didn't want to drop it in. I lay the box on the ground and climbed into the hole. Someone gasped but nobody tried to stop me. I took the box and deposited it at my feet, and as I crouched down to do so my eyes came level with the earth and then below it into shadow. Packed dirt, near black and crisscrossed with roots. An earthworm going about his day. Your grandfather would have liked to see that. And then I stood and came back into the light, past the level of the earth, and I was looking at everyone's shoes. I lifted myself out, I took hold of the shovel, the same shovel I'd used to bury your grandfather the first time, and I scooped some dirt into the hole, onto the box. We took turns shoveling the dirt back into your grandfather's grave, it took a long time, but it didn't seem right for Freddy to use the mini-excavator for that. When we were finished, we stood over the disturbed earth and looked at it, nobody talked. It was quiet, what they call a nonevent. I wanted it that way, this was not fireworks, this was everything finally clicking into place, no more unintended consequences, only peace. And then from some nearby bushes a half dozen birds took off. Everybody looked over, I can't say for sure but I think they were all thinking the same thing, there went your grandfather, there went George Porter, his spirit free now that his wishes had finally been respected, now that he'd been buried where he'd always wanted. Everyone turned their faces to the sky, to follow the birds flying up and away, but my eyes stayed on the bushes, it was like something told me to keep my eyes on the bushes. A moment later a lean gray fox popped out and licked his chops, yolk dripping from his chin.