Bliss and Other Short Stories Part 7

The earth was moving. I sat on the ground and felt the world trembling; beneath my hands I felt its hairy body shaking with tre mendous mirth. A radio was playing in a nearby house and the mu sic, a waltz, floated strangely on the air as the earth shook. I heard a woman calling a man's name. Telephone wires twitched as if teth-ered to invisible, restless dogs. The sky's inverted bowl of unshake-able blue burned over me. Birds raced in all directions.

Then it was over.

When I ran down our street a few minutes later, my mother was waiting for me in the front yard. She was dressed in her paint-crust-ed coveralls and still held a brush in her hand.

"Hey! Are you okay?" Her eyes were wide. She was happy, all right. She clapped her free hand dramatically to her heart and looked up and down the street. She would have liked to share her excitement with the natives, but we seemed to be the only people out of doors.

"Carl. Our first earthquake! Well-strong tremor? But that counts. We're really Californians now. Okay?" She put her hand on my head, stroking my hair. "Carl?"

"Yeah," I said. "It was neat."

But that was a lie. It hadn't felt neat at all. I couldn't catch my breath, and I kept sensing flashy, furtive movements at the edge of my vision and turning my head to catch them. I had slipped into a universe that wouldn't stop moving.

Panic had hit me in the stillness after the tremor. I had run the few remaining blocks home, and now I felt that I wanted to keep running: only swift movement would pacify the tremendous power that was pressing against my skin from inside. Running would con-ceal the shaking I felt certain was visible to my mother.

"Carl," she said, her voice low. "Honey. It's okay." Her hand slid lightly over the back of my head. She gingerly rubbed the place be-tween my shoulder blades where an evil current flashed sparks down my spine, plucking at the muscles of my arms and legs.

"I'm sorry," I said.

My mother spoke softly. "No." Keeping her hand on my back, she moved to my side and we stood together facing the house, listen-ing (I thought) to the noise of my breathing. When it quieted, she said, "Let's go in. I'll fix you something."

We had reached the front door when I remembered my books.

"Okay," she said. "Hm. Okay. You go and get them. Or-" a flour ish of the brush-"I could come with you?"

"No, Mom, I'll go. I'll be right back. Thanks."

"All right, Carl." She smiled at me-and the earth began to shake again.

Seconds later it was over. I extricated myself from my mother's arms and together we walked back to where my books lay. I gath ered them up and we walked home. I did not speak, but my moth er, who loved California suddenly, all at once, and just like that, re marked brightly on the varieties of its flowers and trees-the flush of life surrounding us. But all I could see, in spite of her enthusi asm, was a deceptive veil of vegetation concealing an angry and treacherous earth. *

I entered my bedroom that night with suspicion but everything was as I had left it in the morning. There were no signs of violence: the walls stood smoothly upright, the windows were intact. I had a.s.signed reading, but once in bed I found I couldn't concentrate on the material.

My father had come in upset from work. A young marine in his care had jumped from a third-floor barracks window, breaking a leg and fracturing his skull. When the boy recovered, my father said with a tight and angry smile, he stood a good chance of being court-martialed for trying to kill himself. During dinner, my moth er mentioned the tremor-which the news people were calling an earthquake-but my father only said distractedly, "Oh? We'll have to expect those, I suppose." I didn't say anything-didn't tell my father that I felt I had been pushed from a high place and was still falling- and we pa.s.sed the rest of the evening in a gloomy silence.

When I switched off the bedroom light, my fear returned re freshed from where it had been working out. I began to sweat. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I made out the familiar outlines of the windows, the long, ghostly panels of the closet door shim mering into shape, the front edges of my desk brushed with a single stroke of light from the street. But it was all unfamiliar, too; it could've been any room. Like the motel rooms we stayed in on the trip west, its uniqueness had been stolen. Feeling on those nights an eerie kinship with a silent, migratory procession that had no beginning and no end, I had told myself, It's just a motel room, and then I had slept.

But I didn't sleep now. When I considered switching on the light for comfort, I felt ashamed and angry. The room seemed to sense this weakness and its hatefulness hardened into glee. I lay rigid, staring at the ceiling without blinking until its plastered creami ness deepened into a wavering illusion of troubled water. But when I rubbed my eyes and looked again, it was once again a solid surface, and more sharply focused. Just as I turned my head, something up there caught my eye.

I took the flashlight from the drawer of the night stand and fol lowed its beam across the ceiling until it fixed on what I had spied: a long, meandering crack that cut right across the plaster.

Taking my pillow and blanket-and, after a moment's thought, the flashlight-I crawled under the bed. I set my mind on waking up at my father's first stirrings, and then I slept. *

My new friends Henry and Paul were talking about the quake in school the next morning. Henry, whose locker was next to mine, slammed it shut and leaned against the metal door.

"Hey, Carl, did you feel it yesterday?"

"I did."

"So?-what did you think?"

I shrugged and twirled the locker's dial.

"Man, that was nothing," he said.

"It was less than nothing, d.i.c.kweed," Paul said. "A negative quake."

He looked at me. "You don't have quakes back east, do you?"

"Chicago is pretty stable," I said.

Henry drummed on his locker. "The big one! It's the big one!

We're all gonna die!"

"Women and children first!" someone shouted, and everyone laughed. I twirled the dial.

"Yeah," Paul said. "Far out, man. When the big one comes, this place'll be history."

"So will we," Henry said. "Tidal waves, you name it. Look at this guy. Been here three months and can't get his locker open." He looked around. "Hey, Carolyn," he called, "by any chance do you know Carl's combination?"

Carolyn Wilson looked over from her open locker, smiled, and shook her head. She didn't have to speak, and we all knew it.

"This d.a.m.n lock is broken," I said to Paul.

"You're pathetic, man," Henry said. "Hey, Carolyn, help this guy out." She was walking by. She was slowing down.

She actually stopped. We all froze.

"What seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?"

Cool and beautiful. Shoulder-length hair the colors of washed- out rock maple leaves in October. Freckles in a constellation across the nose. Smart, I had heard. And you, I thought, you spent the night under the bed.

"Beats me," Henry said. "Chicago here seems to be locked out of his locker. It's puzzling."

"Broken," I croaked.

"I see, said the blind man." She grinned at me.

The bell rang. Doors opened and the hallway was immediately, loudly jammed. She moved off, still smiling, and I jumped at this lingering contact.

"So what'll I do?" I called out.

"Suffer," she called back. *

My father lowered his fork and looked at me across the table.

"Sleep out? What in the world for?"

I shrugged. "Why not? It's California, Dad. It's not like I'll get frostbite."

My mother didn't say anything. She ladled some more Califor nia-style vegetarian stew onto Dad's plate. Then she caught my eye: we held our look for a moment-my gaze bland, hers appraising- before she turned to Dad.

"What can it hurt, Robert? Sounds healthy to me." She looked down. "This needs something. Cheese?"

"I love cheese," my father said. "I'd kill for cheese. Carl, check the fridge."

I fetched the cheese and grater and a bowl and brought them to the table, grated the cheese, and pa.s.sed the bowl to my father.

"So, can I?"

"What? Oh, sure." He heaped cheese onto his stew. "Better wrap up, though. Nights are surprisingly chilly out here . . . Oh, this defi nitely helps. Delicious."

"I think next time I'll use more pepper," my mother said.

"Carl, get the pepper," my father said.

My mother glanced up. "You're full of orders tonight."

"Can't help it," my father said. "Semper fi."

Mom sighed, got up, and brought coffee to the table. She poured cups for herself and my father.

"How about me, too, Mom?"

"None for you tonight, Carl." Again, that appraising look. "It might keep you awake."

I unrolled my sleeping bag and lay down on it, letting my gaze drift upward through the branches of the avocado trees and blowing clouds to the stars. I thought about Carolyn Wilson and felt fool ish, happy, and relatively safe.

The back door opened and closed, and I heard the click of my mother's lighter. In a moment she came into view. She opened her hand and a stocking cap fell onto my stomach.

"Your father insists that you wear this."

"Okay." I put the cap on. I hadn't worn it since Chicago and al ready it seemed like an odd hand-me-down, a token from another life.

We'd spent our last day there visiting with my grandparents, and after we'd said good-bye my mother ran back and held her father and cried while I stood in the middle of the yard, waiting, and my father sat in the truck with the motor running.

"Great," I said. "Thanks."

"You're welcome." She took a drag from her cigarette. "Carl, what are you wearing?"

"My sweat suit."

"It's not enough. Really, you'll freeze. Come in and put some thing else on."

"Mom. I'm not even in the bag yet. When I get inside, I'll be fine."

My mother yanked her sweater tight around her shoulders. Her head was in the stars. "You won't. I won't have you catching pneu- monia just because you insist on, I don't know, returning to a state of nature. I think it's going to rain."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Mom."

After a moment she said, "I suppose I'll have to get used to be ing sworn at, too."

"Mom, I'm sorry. Look-I'm fine, really." I had no intention of moving.

"Forget it." She turned and started back toward the house. Then, as if to herself: "You're fine, I'm fine, we're all fine. Goodnight." She got halfway to the house before she stopped. She spoke in a voice almost too low to be heard but which carried, like the layered wind off Lake Michigan, mixed tones, warm and cool. "Call me if you need anything." *

I had already considered the possibility of rain and had a plan ready so that when, in the middle of my third night outdoors, I woke up with rain in my face, I quickly bundled up my bag and ran up the path to my mother's studio.

In the event of an earthquake, I reasoned, the shed would dance a little but would not collapse. Turning on the light, I surveyed the interior of the ten-by-twenty all-wood-therefore flexible-build ing. Nailed to one of its long walls and framed by windows on either side was my mother's new painting, of Saint Matthew com posing his gospel.

According to legend, Matthew was illiterate, and wrote his gospel under the tutelage of an angel. Most of the cla.s.sical pictures show him puzzling over a piece of paper while a studious and obliging angel stands nearby, guiding his hand toward enlightenment.

But my mother's saint has dropped his paper and pen and stares in astonishment at the decidedly female angel who's sitting on his lap. Their mint-perfect profiled heads all but touch at the nose and a yellow light shimmers from their hair, which appears, at first glance, to be in flames. You sense that only one or two moments have pa.s.sed since the angel's appearance. But Matthew has regained composure enough to hook one arm securely around her waist and twist his fingers into the braided gold of her belt, anchoring her; and her right arm is flung around his neck, her fingers are already interwo ven with his hair. At the exact center of the picture, she touches his lips with the fingers of her other hand, daring him, with her eyes, to speak the truth.

I spread my bag on the floor in the dark and crawled inside.

Listening to the rain's impatient fingers on the roof, I fell asleep thinking about the possible kinship of women and angels, about my mother's saint catching fire, and, briefly, about how and when I would return to my own bed. *

My mother was not at all pleased that I'd spent the night in the studio.

"You were breathing turpentine fumes all night," she said. "Don't you know how dangerous that is?"

"I didn't even notice."

This wasn't true: I'd woken up at six with a sharp pain jimmy ing my ribs.

"You should have noticed."

It was Sat.u.r.day. We were all sitting at the kitchen table.

"Carl, I have to agree with your mother," my father said.

"You're in there all day," I said, ignoring him.

"I keep the windows open."

"So did I."

There was a silence. I lowered my eyes, but not before I caught the glance that pa.s.sed between them. I drank my coffee, breathing shallowly so as not to awaken the turpentine cough that lay coiled at the end of each inhalation.

"Carl." My father leaned forward. "Marian and I have talked this over-now, don't misunderstand me. We respect your feelings about the earthquake and we know you're apprehensive. Maybe-"

"Oh, you've talked it over. That's great," I said. To avoid their anx ious eyes I looked at the window, running with California rain.

"Carl-"