Topping From Below (10 page)
The only part of my life that does seem real to me is the part with Ian. Despite his occasional outbursts, he seems perfect for me. There’s a natural ease to our relationship that’s out of proportion to the time we’ve been together. Some people might call us boring, but I find a peacefulness in our simple lives, and it pleases me enormously. Our routines are predictable and extremely prosaic, but since Franny’s death I’ve come to cherish the ordinary. I feel secure with Ian, grounded, and that, for now, is enough.
I’m in the living room tonight, sitting in an armchair reading
The New Yorker
, and occasionally I’ll look over at Ian. Just the sight of him makes me smile with pleasure. Men, by my choice, have always been a temporary presence in my life, like a car you drive until you decide to trade it in for a new model. But with Ian, my vocabulary—along with my preference for the transient—is changing. Words pop up in my mind I’ve never seriously thought about before:
permanence, longterm, commitment, marriage.
He’s sitting on the edge of the couch, hunched over the coffee table, a knife and a small block of holly in hand, whittling. Wood carving is a hobby of his since childhood, and for several years he has concentrated primarily on miniature sculptures. It is meticulous, painstaking work, and for hours he’ll sit with a piece of wood in one hand, a knife or gouge or chisel in the other, and make minute cuts that will transform a block of holly or basswood or ebony or boxwood into a small figurine, usually no larger than three inches: birds, animals, insects, caricatures. Tonight, he’s carving a snake hatching from an egg. A tuft of his blond hair has fallen forward over his eye, but I doubt that he has noticed; his concentration is total, his cuts in the wood precise.
I set down
The New Yorker
and go over to him, rest my hand gently on his shoulder. He looks up, quizzical, his knife suspended in the air. I can’t help but smile at the odd picture he creates: a husky man who looks as if he could plow fields without assistance, working on a miniature carving so delicate it appears lost in his fist. Unconsciously and very lightly, he rubs the wood with his thumb.
“I feel like making popcorn,” I say. “Would you like some?” and, distractedly, he nods, smiles, and returns to his carving.
“I have to go to the store,” I say. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” but Ian is already working on the snake sculpture, and I doubt that he has heard me. I grab my keys and purse, and back my Honda out of the garage. Around the house, highpressure sodium streetlamps give off an eerie orangish glow that barely lights up the neighborhood, and once I turn onto Mace Boulevard the lamps are spaced far apart, and the street is dark and quiet, deserted, the adjacent fields tenebrous with moon shadows. I drive farther, where fields give way to subdivisions, past El Macero Country Club on the right, the lowerpriced homes on the left, then pull into the shopping center. Inside the store, I locate the popcorn and spend a few minutes deciding what to buy: natural, butter flavored, herb and garlic flavored, salt free, light buttered, cheddar cheese flavored. I decide on a box of the light buttered and walk to the front of the grocery store. Just a few people are shopping this late at night, and the store seems oddly quiet, the silence broken only by the sporadic sobs of a small girl following her mother down the cereal aisle.
I hand the cashier five dollars, wait for my change, then go outside into the cool, night air. The sky is black and clear, and I absently take in the images around me—up ahead, an old man fumbling with his car keys; a heavyset blond woman yelling at her boy to stop running between the parked cars; a bag boy rolling a queue of shopping carts across the asphalt and into the store.
“Hey! You!”
I look up and see the old man waving at me, frantic.
“Watch out!” he yells, and at the same time I hear an engine, the motor loud and too close, and I turn slightly and see a dark car speeding in my direction, fishtailing as if it’s out of control. I jump back and slam into a parked truck, watching the other car—its windows blackened, the driver invisible—miss me by inches. The car accelerates and screeches around the corner, disappearing. I stay down, heart pounding, unable to move.
“Damn teenagers,” the old man mutters when he reaches me, and he pulls me up by the elbow. “They drive too damned fast. Never watch where they’re going. They could’ve killed you.”
I rise to my feet, still shaken.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod, thinking not of teenagers but of M., getting angry. The blond woman I saw earlier comes running across the parking lot, dragging her boy by the arm.
“Did you see what kind of car it was?” I ask the old man.
“Black,” he said. “A black car. That’s all I saw.”
“Are you all right?” the woman asks, breathless from her jog across the parking lot. The boy pulls on her arm, trying to get loose. She grips him tighter. “I thought for sure you were going to get hit.”
“What kind of car was it?” I ask her. “Did you see the model? The license?”
She shakes her head. “It all happened so fast. It’s a miracle he didn’t hit you.”
I rub my elbow where it banged against the truck, berating myself for not thinking fast enough, for not getting the license number.
“It’s them damn teenagers,” the old man repeats, but I have some doubts about that. I see my popcorn lying on the asphalt, the box squashed from the car’s tires.
When I return home, Ian is still in the living room, working on his block of holly.
“I’m going to take a bath,” I say, and he looks up briefly.
“Weren’t you going to make popcorn?” he asks.
“I changed my mind. I’d rather soak in the tub.”
He says, “I’ll join you in a bit,” and makes a cut in the wood.
The tub is in the guest bathroom in the hallway. I turn on the bath water, adjust it to the temperature I want, and let it run as I go into the bedroom. Stepping out of my clothes, I grab a robe and return to the bathroom, shutting the door behind me so the steam will not escape. I set my robe on the counter, then test the temperature with my big toe. The water is hot, too hot, almost scalding—just the way I like it—and I have to inch myself in. Hot water gurgles out of the spigot; beads of moisture drip down the yellow-tiled walls. My skin prickles and reddens under the water, and it takes me minutes just to get both feet in the tub. I see bruises already forming on my right thigh and shoulder where I slammed into the truck. Could M. have been driving that car?
I slide down slowly and watch the water as it covers my body. When the tub is almost full, I lean forward and turn off the spigot, then settle back again, closing my eyes, thinking of the black car. I vow to be more cautious in the future.
After twenty minutes or so, the water becomes tepid. I drain out a few inches, then add more hot water, swirling it around with my arms. I hear the doorknob turn, and Ian walks in. He kneels down by the tub. Frowning, he says, “How did you get this?” He points at my thigh, where the skin is red and slightly swollen. “And this?” he asks, moving his finger up to my shoulder.
“I fell on the porch step,” I lie. “It’s nothing.”
Ian kisses the wound softly. With the washcloth, he begins rubbing my arms and shoulders, being careful to avoid the damaged skin. Neither of us speaks, but the pleasure he takes in washing my body shows in his face. I close my eyes and lie still, content, feeling the tenderness in his touch, so loving. Languid and sodden, I yield completely under his hands. He slides soap and washcloth over my flesh, stopping to massage the muscles in my neck, calves, the unbruised thigh. Now is the moment to tell him of my dinner last night with M., I think. In fairness to Ian, I must make a complete disclosure—that I saw M. and will continue to see him until I learn everything he knows, and everything he did, to Franny. Ian is part of my life now, and I owe him the truth. But when I open my eyes and look at him, I know I will tell him nothing. He would argue, he would say I was being foolish—especially if I told him what happened tonight at the store—and he would insist I never see M. I fear I might lose Ian over this, and that fact keeps me from telling the truth.
Smiling, he takes off his clothes, then, as I lean forward, he steps in behind me. The water rises, almost spilling over the rim. He’s a big man, and the two of us don’t fit easily in my small tub. One of his legs is resting on the edge, the other bent at the knee. I’m wedged back against him, between his legs, my knees drawn up to my chest. It’s cramped, uncomfortable, awkward, but somehow strangely soothing. His physical presence calms me, and as he snakes his arms around my body, holding me, I tell myself that it is better, for Ian’s sake, to keep M. a secret. Still, this rationalization does not work. I feel my deception acutely; it’s as tangible as the two large hands resting on my belly.
Although my home on Torrey Street is within the city limits, on the southernmost tip, the subdivision is separated from Davis proper by Interstate 80, and if you continue southward from my home, the area becomes distinctly rural, miles of flat agricultural land, open and cultivated fields broken only by farm equipment and an occasional old home or a small onebuilding business—a seed company, a wholesale nursery, the Sierra Sod building. M. jogs out here regularly, Rameau trotting at his side.
Dressed in a black sweatsuit and tennis shoes, I surprised him earlier this morning on the corner of Montgomery and Rosario, up the street from my house. He seemed amused when he saw me; he invited me along. The sun is not yet up, but streaks of purplish-gray light, emerging from the east, seep across the horizon like trickling water oozing from a sluice gate. We jog south on County Road 104, past open fields—dewy, mist-covered monochromatic landscapes, shadowy in the sunless sky. In the cool air, our breaths come out in white clouds, mine more labored than his. I haven’t jogged for ages, and although I work out regularly at the athletic club, I’m not prepared for a three-mile run, which is M.’s routine on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
I glance over at him. I admit he’s an attractive man. Lean and in good shape, he has the placid, slightly bored expression of a runner who’s nowhere close to pushing his limits. I’m sure he’s jogging slower than normal just to accommodate me. He’s wearing a navy blue jogging suit with a white stripe down the outside of each leg. And mittens. I wish I’d remembered to wear mittens. My fingers feel numb in the chilly early-morning air.
“Where were you the night before last?” I ask him.
He gives me a quick, sidelong glance. “The night before last?” he asks.
“Yes. Around eight-thirty.”
He thinks for a moment, then says, “Home.”
“Alone, I suppose.”
“That’s right.”
“How convenient. And you don’t know anything about a dark car with blackened windows that nearly ran me down?”
M. stops jogging. “Are you serious?” he says, a look of concern spreading across his face. I keep on going. He catches up to me.
“I’m not about to run you over with a car,” he says. “Obviously, it was an accident.”
“Obviously.”
He looks over at me with a droll smile. “If I decide to come after you, Nora, you’ll know it. I won’t hide behind blackened windows.”
“And it’ll take more than a near-miss to scare me away. I intend to find out the truth about Franny. And you.”
We jog without speaking. To the right, a lone tractor slowly trundles across a patch of brown land, and in the distance I see a man rambling through a field in some sort of three-wheeled vehicle, stopping every now and then to check on the irrigation pipes.
Breathing heavily, I run along, my feet pounding the asphalt, feeling ungainly next to M. with his light-footed, easy pace. “I usually work out in the gym,” I tell him, trying to breathe normally. “Swimming, weights, aerobic classes, Jazzercise. I haven’t jogged for years.”
“I can tell,” he says, and I hear the condescension in his voice. I pick up my speed, even though it makes my lungs ache.
“You said you knew about Franny’s diary,” I begin.
“Yes, I even read it.”
“Then you know how sketchy it was. And that she stopped making entries toward the end. The last part of her life is missing.”
I stop speaking to catch my breath, and we jog in silence. A backhoe, like a defunct dinosaur, is poised on the edge of the road with its clawed scoop turned in on itself, as if it were digging its own grave.
“You didn’t tell me anything about Franny the other night,” I continue. “I want to know what happened in the weeks right before she died.”
“Not so fast,” M. says. “Time to back up; we’re going to do this chronologically. I’m saving that for last.” He hesitates, then adds, “And I can only give you information up to a certain point. I didn’t kill Franny; you’ll have to search elsewhere for that piece of information. Even so, there’s plenty I can tell you.”
We jog on. I am irritated but try not to show it. This is, after all, his game, and I have to play by his rules—or so he thinks. My shoes thud rhythmically on the road. I thought my reservoir of energy was near depletion, but I feel a renewal, a determination to continue, despite the pain in my calves and lungs.
“Okay,” I say finally. “We’ll do it your way. Tell me something about Franny—something I don’t know.”
In thought, he gazes across an immense field of sod, the grass gathering color in the lightening sky, flocked like velvet in the early-morning dew, seemingly endless. M. does not vary his pace; it is steady, even, and, for him, leisurely.
He says, “There were two things Franny was very good at: communicating—which I know comes as a surprise to you—and oral sex.” He pauses. “On second thought, I suppose both will surprise you.”
Oral sex? I say nothing. After reading Franny’s diary 1 realized she had, like everyone else, sexual desires. Still, I have trouble imagining her sucking this man’s cock—and being good at it. Or even liking it.
He continues, “At the beginning, she was horrible at both. She was very shy when we first met and had a difficult time speaking about you, or your parents or brother, or what she was feeling inside, but once she trusted me she opened right up. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I forced her to open up. I gave her no choice: I questioned her relentlessly, probing deeper into her psyche each time. She was timid and apprehensive until the end, and she never stood up to me, but at least she got to the point where she could articulate her feelings quite well—to me, if not to anyone else. I know a lot about you, Nora, from Franny’s point of view—I know what she thought of you, and what she needed and couldn’t get from you.”