When You Go Away (6 page)

     "Some days it takes a while," Ralph said, leaning against the fence.

     "Indeed," Carl said. If someone didn't come in fifteen minutes, though, he was going to go home and work on his sprinkler system.  It was getting hot enough to run it every other day, and one head was plugged, causing the water to geyser into his Mrs. Trimble's yard, his old bitch neighbor.  "You're causing root rot," she'd yelled over her rhododendrons yesterday.  "I can't have that, you know."

     He'd spent the morning at Home Depot looking for parts, and he knew he should put them in before switching the system on automatic.  He'd end up with Mrs. Trimble on his doorstep clutching her wilted plants, dirt flying everywhere from the mangled, drooping roots.

     "Okay!  We're on," Ralph said.  Bob and Ramon walked through the court, and Carl breathed out, needing this match, needing it every day, like some kind of fix.  This habit had started after he and his wife had split up and he found himself free--or empty, he wasn't sure what the right word was—after 5.30, so he'd searched around and discovered
this pick up match.  Carl liked the order of the games, the way people rotated in set after set, spinning to see who played, almost all mannerly, spats over bad calls not lasting more than one or two games.  He'd been coming up here for almost thirty years, and once he retired, he was able to start at 2.30, getting in two, sometimes three sets.  So, he was one of the old guys now, one of the men the younger fellas probably hoped they wouldn't get as a partner.  But he was still fit, his legs muscular, his gut not hanging over his pants.  And he still had it, too, not needing that Viagra like Ralph did.  After that last blasted exam, his doctor said his prostate was as smooth and round as a bean.  Not that he'd had the opportunity to use his still firm anything.  He should have remarried when he’d had the chance, but time was never right, the perfect woman just around the corner.  Strange thing was, now life was a straight line, no corners at all.

     And damn if the only woman he'd been close to lately was Mrs. Trimble, which was enough to turn him off women for life.  But tennis helped him stay ready for whoever might show up.  He wanted to play.  He needed to.

     "Let's go," Carl said, standing up and stretching first his right and then his left shoulder.  "I want to beat you all."

On his way home, he took a left instead of a right so he wouldn't have to pass Mrs. Trimble's house.  She was always out front pruning something, keeping her eye on his sprinklers, neighborhood dogs, cats looking for soft dirt to scratch in, unusual cars, someone to talk to.  He pulled his 1966 Chevy Corvair convertible carefully into his garage, immediately pushing the door button behind him.  He could hear the phone
ringing as soon as he cut the engine.  He'd forgotten to turn on his machine, so he hurried into the house, pausing only when he thought of Mrs. Trimble, but she didn't have his number so he answered it, trying to hide his breathlessness.

     "Yeah."

     "Dad, it's me.  Are you okay?"

     "Fine.  Fine.  Where are you?"

     There was a pause, the sound of shuffled papers.  Carl imagined Noel’s set face, the way he bit his lower lip when he was thinking.

     "Sorry.  Can you hold on for a second--I'm still at work."

     Carl sat down, putting a hand on his chest, feeling the quick pattern of breath in his lungs.  He was relieved to be listening to the muffled sounds of a business conversation.  If he didn’t have a second to regroup, Carl thought he might turn into an emergency here, his heart pounding as if he'd been playing singles instead of doubles.  As his breath slowed a bit, Carl brought the phone closer, the noises of the Kent Raifson Cleary brokerage office in his ear. When Carl was in commercial real estate, he thrived on the din of machines and voices, the bustle and adrenaline that seemed to fill him, made him wake up for another day, made all the time at home dull as a church service.  Noel was exactly the same, waking at 4.30, driving to the office to be able to check the markets back east and in
Asia
, managing his accounts, clients, deals.  “Dad,” he’d say, calling from a taxi in
Chicago
.  “We sealed the
Toy
Town
account.”  Work seemed about the same as women—once plentiful, vastly entertaining, and hard to remember.  Sure, after
he'd retired, it had taken two, three years before he stopped waking up at exactly 5.35; but now, he sometimes had to set the alarm to wake up at nine, the thought of a good project and two fine sets of tennis enough for him.

     “Dad.” Noel was back, a sigh behind his words.

     “What’s going on?  Are you okay?  I thought you were in
New York
.”

     “I was.”

     “How did it go?”

     “Fine.  Good.  We probably have the TexCorp account.  They liked our package—but that’s not why I called.”

     Carl felt his pulse glide to normal.  “What’s wrong?”

     "It's not an emergency.  But it's the same thing I've been talking about for a month.  We have got to get a hold of Graham.  I called Peri's neighbor Melinda, and she told me that Peri came by yesterday, looking terrible, but she doesn't have a number either.  She said that Peri promised to call her, but she hasn't."

      Carl shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck.  "I'm the last person Peri wants to have find her, Noel.  She's fine.  She's a grown woman, who obviously can take care of herself and those kids.  You know how well she's done with Brooke. With all the kids."

     Noel's voice tightened.  "You didn't see her before she moved.  And why hasn't she called?"

     "She didn't want to see me, Noel.  I left a message awhile back to ask her about the move. I never heard a word."

     "But she hasn’t called me either.  And she was on the edge.  Tired.  Completely drained.  It’s all Graham’s fault.  I don't even want to talk to the son-of-a-bitch, but he's got to know where they are."

     Standing up, Carl moved to the kitchen with the portable phone to pour himself a glass of water from the faucet.  As he listened to Noel, he looked out the window at two chickadees on the bird feeder he'd bought at Home
Depot
, both spraying seed to the ground. 
A big waste
, he thought,
and
I'll have to worry about rodents later
.

     “She’s been doing okay,” Carl said, but he really didn’t know anything.  His daughter's divorce had been awful and even worse for Carl because as she went through the legal proceedings and the emotional upset, Peri seemed to revisit and
re-experience
his divorce, his and her mother's.  She'd been seven when he and Janice separated, and Carl had tried to see the kids as much as he could, hunkering down with them on weekends, taking them to tennis matches with Bob and dinners at Mel’s Diner.  But after Graham left, it was as if Peri forgot all of his efforts, looking at Carl as if he were the one who’d left a disabled child.  "I can't believe you did this to Mom.  I’m glad she can't see this happening all over again," she'd hissed at him the last Thanksgiving they'd spent together as a family.  "You are all alike." 

     He'd wanted to remind Peri that he'd only moved a few miles away, saw her on the weekends, and never stopped supporting her.  But he hadn't, not wanting to add anything
else to her misery.  Her whole house was saturated with it, as if it had a leaky sprinkler head.

     Carl could almost hear Noel shaking his head, the skiff, skiff of his work shirt against the receiver.  "She’s not okay,” Noel was saying.  “And I blame myself for this.  It's all my fault.  I should have checked in more often.  Especially on Brooke.  I've been so busy with work."

     “You have to work, son,” Carl said.  “We all have to work.”

      “Yeah. But what if something horrible has happened?"  Noel's voice deepened, and Carl paced back and forth, remembering how upset Noel used to get as a child.  Usually quiet, he would surprise Janice and Carl by suddenly throwing himself on the floor in a classic temper tantrum, flailing his arms and legs, emitting shrieks of sorrow the neighbors could hear.

     Standing again by the sink, Carl put his hand on his hip.  "Okay.  Listen Noel.  I'll go ahead and get on the horn to
Phoenix
.  I can find Graham.  You're working.  That's important.  Don't think otherwise."

     "What if you can't find him?"

     "If that doesn’t pan out, I'll go over to the neighborhood and talk to Melinda.  I remember her.  The one with the boob job."

     Noel laughed.  Just a little.  "Yeah.  That's her."

     "She'll know all of Peri's friends.  So I'll call you, okay?  Let me take care of it for now." 

     He could hear the decision in Noel' silence.  Carl closed his eyes.  No matter how he acted, no matter what he'd done for his daughter since the divorce, he'd never be able to make it up.  With Peri, he would never be good, not now, not ever.  He’d gone to Carly’s ballet recitals and school plays and Ryan’s soccer matches; he’d sat by Brooke’s bed and read her the books Carly picked out for them: 
Pig William, The Giving Tree, Where the Wild Things Ar
e, The Trouble With Trumpets
.
   He’d shown up for every single holiday dinner, two years ago even hosting Christmas brunch.  But in the year since Graham left, Carl was beaten down by the look of disgust in Peri’s eyes, the way she ignored what he wanted to give her, them.  What she still wanted, he felt, even though Janice had died almost five years ago from stomach cancer, was for Janice and him to get back together, the fantasy of a child of divorce.  And in a way, that fantasy was an extension of her hope that Graham would come back, say he was sorry, move them back to Monte Veda and their old life.  What could Carl do about that?

     "Okay.  But we've got to do it soon.  Today," Noel said.

     "I know.  I will,” Carl said, thinking this would all turn out fine.  Peri could take on any load and carry it farther than anyone else he knew.

     "Call me when you know anything."

     Carl hung up, adrenaline in his body, a warm spin in his chest.  He'd fix the flipping sprinkler head and avert a Trimble crisis.  He'd take a shower.  He would get on the horn.



     "So you're saying there's no listing for a Graham Mackenzie?"

     "No, sir."

     "I’m not sure how he’d be listed.  What about a G. Mackenzie?"

     "No, sir.  I have a Gloria and a Greg.  But no Graham."

     "All right, miss.  Thank you."

     Carl sat back in his chair and pressed the phone against his chest.  Zero for two, no listing for Peri in
Walnut Creek
or Graham in
Phoenix
.  Graham, that slimy SOB, was probably unlisted so Peri's lawyers couldn't find him.  Or he put everything in his new wife's name so the IRS couldn't attach his wages or something.  He was hiding, that was for sure.  Peri had to know where he was, but if Peri was lost somewhere in suburbia, how could Carl flush-out Graham to find her?  It was too confusing.

     Carl stood up and went to his junk drawer, digging around until he found his small green address book, something he'd had for decades.  He flipped to M and found it.  Garnet Mackenzie. 

     He dialed and waited, breathing in when she answered.  Her voice was the same, that snooty sound he'd never liked, as if she spoke with her lips pinched in disapproval.

     "Oh, Carl.  My goodness.  How long has it been?"

    
Not long enough
, he thought, not really knowing why he felt this way about Garnet.  She’d been decent enough to Peri and good her grandchildren, never forgetting birthdays, sending them to summer camps at her expense, calling specialists when Brooke was born.  But she rubbed him like rough asphalt.  Maybe it was the way she carried herself with royal bearing, the widow of a famous
Alameda
County
judge, long dead, his office almost a memorial to his controversial and colorful career.  Maybe it was the way she spoke to everyone as if she knew what was right, correcting people’s pronunciation of English or any other language she might have studied at
Cal
as a humanities major.  “It’s
Chen-tro
, dear,” she would say.  “Not
sent-ro
.”  Maybe it was simply the way that her and her husband’s life together hung brighter when put next to his—his and Janice’s.

      "It’s been a long time.  Listen, I was wondering if you could give me Graham's number.  I need to talk to him about something."

     He could almost hear her biting her cheek.  He pictured Garnet, imagined that a maid was dusting her twelve-foot long dining room table as Garnet sat in the parlor, as she called it.  Her Piedmont house was bigger than some hotels he'd stayed in.  "Well, I can't do that, Carl.  I can't just give his number out.  He's asked me not to."

     "It's important, Garnet.  I need to talk to him about something very important."  Carl rubbed his cheek, his face full of the heat rising from his chest.  He wasn’t sure what he was feeling, but as he listened to Garnet’s pause, he thought it might be worry.