I Knew You'd Be Lovely Part 14

Mandy came down the stairs in a short yellow dress. She looked better than gorgeous; she looked out of this world. She walked right up to me, wearing an expression of barely contained delight. Whatever it was she had to say, it was going to be good.

"I got into art school," she said. "I'm going to Rome!"

There are some moments in life that are so disorienting, so surreal, you find yourself saying the exact opposite of what you feel.

"That's so wonderful," I said. If she'd been smiling any wider, her mouth would have jumped off her face.

"I didn't tell anyone I was applying," she said. "Not even my parents. I never thought I'd get in. They only take about four students a year. I just found out today."

"That's wonderful," I said again. I'm convinced I was in shock; I'm lucky she didn't ask me who the President was. "We'll have to make a toast."

A shadow crossed her face. "You don't understand," she said. "I can't go out with you now. There's too much I need to do before I leave."

"You can't go out with me now, or you don't want to go out with me now?"

"Don't be like that," she said. Then she ran into the living room and came back holding a wooden cigar box. "I have something for you," she said. "But it's for the future. You can't open it until"-she paused-"Twenty-ten." Twenty-ten. The word sounded absurd and impossible, an abstraction out of science fiction.

The box's lid had been engraved with a dove with both wings spread open. "Did you make this?" I said.

She nodded. "Just give it a good bang against a rock and it'll open," she said. "It's only sealed with Elmer's."

I set the box down and put my hands on the bony wings of her hips. "Why don't you give it to me in person?"

"Take it now," she said. "But don't open it until twenty-ten." She pinched me. "Promise."

"I promise," I said. A moment pa.s.sed, then Harold's voice came from the TV room. "For the love of G.o.d, kiss her already!"

She sent me postcards, mostly decorated with her drawings, but a few had words thrown in, in a snaking pattern around the border, or inside the petals of a flower. I thought about her every day, but for some reason I could never bring myself to write her back. I suppose I felt abandoned, plus she was just so far away. The box remained sealed. I was a man of principles-principles that were circ.u.mscribed by boundaries of my own invention, but principles nonetheless.

For a few years, I worked as a DJ on Boylston Street, until I got tired of wearing earplugs every night. While I lived in Providence, I was a research a.s.sistant to a professor who used me more to coordinate his travel plans than to do any actual research. I had a brief stint as a cub reporter until everyone at the newspaper lost their jobs. I worked in sales, where the better I became at it, the more I hated it. I got in on the ground floor of a video startup that tried unsuccessfully to create demand for virtual tours of college campuses. I even had a job at an aeros.p.a.ce company, where I once carried a rocket nosecone on my shoulder. I've been a music tutor, a limo driver, a service technician, and a short-order cook. All told, I've lived in thirteen cities over the past thirty-three years. I was married once, when I lived in San Antonio, but it didn't take; I probably shouldn't have let myself be talked into it in the first place. People speak of not being able to outrun their ghosts, but for me it was just the opposite. I always felt as if I couldn't quite catch up to mine.

For the past couple of years, I've worked as a sound engineer for the film industry. I'll let you in on a little trick of the trade: The best way to portray silence in a movie is not with an absence of noise, but with the merest, tiniest sound.

Ace made his fortune patenting a microchip with the Bible on it-the non-Seussian version-that people could wear as jewelry. He now lives four hours north of me, in Big Sur, in a house with one wall made entirely of gla.s.s.

I haven't heard Mandy Purcell's name since that summer, so if she got anywhere with her art, she didn't go platinum with it. I've searched for her on the Internet, but with no luck. I realize she could be dead. I used to dream that she flew across the ocean for me, in the form of a huge white bird. It's funny-she and Harold were both in love with the song "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons; it played constantly at the nursing home. The song opens with a long major third, so now I think of Mandy whenever I'm stuck in traffic on the 10. The major third is the interval to which most car horns are tuned.

It's a Thursday night in Culver City. The year is 2010. Voyager 2 is in the constellation known as Telescopium; it has traveled more than eight billion miles. I don't know where along the way I lost the box. But I've started dreaming of Mandy again. In the dream, I find her. She's alive, but her last name has changed. She asks me to give her one reason why she should go out with me. I tell her that I was a fool, that all twenty-two-year-olds are fools, that it's a law of nature. Plus, she owes me a date. She's the kind of person who believes in second chances, and she's willing to give me one. On one condition: I have to tell her what was in the box. I have the dream over and over, and my answer is always different. The box was filled with white feathers. With painted rocks. With starlight. With poems, the most beautiful poems, that were all unbelievable, and all true. The box contained a list of everything I wish I had never done, and I tear it up and toss it into the sea. The box contained a list of everything I still wish I could do.

In one version, I confess that I lost it. That my intentions were good, but that somehow, in the execution, I screwed up royally. That this is, in fact, the story of my life. Mandy tells me that she understands, she always understood, she knew this about me, and she forgives me.

This morning, a friend forwarded me something that's making the rounds. It's a list of "Better Names" for record alb.u.ms. Most of them are jokey, but there's one that takes itself seriously: The Far Side of the Moon. I think I know who wrote it. I'm going to track her down. And if she asks me her question, I'm ready. The box, I'll say, was empty.

SOMEDAY IS TODAY.

My sister's husband died recently, and sorrow has made her a little girl again. Although she's thirty-nine, I keep catching glimpses of her little-girl face, the face I know from old photographs and junior high yearbooks. She's lost weight, and that adds to the impression, contributes to this parade of unbidden memories from when we were kids growing up outside Boston. She was the bony brunette sister, the reader in the family, very pretty, with high cheekbones and a blunt way with words. I was the oldest, blond, the people-pleaser.

I'm visiting her in California, trying to help out with the kids. There are three girls: fraternal twins who are six, and another girl who's four. When her husband died, my sister took her children to a field of daffodils a few blocks from their house, spread out a blanket, and had them sit down. The sun was high and bright; their father had died the day before. When she told them, the outgoing twin said: "How soon do we get a new daddy?"; the shy one said: "I knew it"; and the youngest asked if she could go play on the tire swing.

The house my sister lives in was undergoing major renovations when her husband died, so she and I and the kids are all crammed into the casita, a small abode in the back, beside the pool. The main house is stately, elegant-tragic. The perfect setting for something heartbreaking to happen-how could we not have seen it before? It looks like an old plantation house, with white columns and a second-story balcony. The workmen have cleared out all the rooms; there's a plastic tarp over the piano, and dust everywhere. Dust coats the soles of your feet when you leave.

My sister has found some comfort in the widow boards on the Internet. One of them has a list of Ten Helpful Hints for Getting Through This Most Difficult Time in Your Life. Hint Number 7: Learn to Expect the Unexpected. "Expect to cry at odd times: At the sight of a couple holding hands, at the sound of the doorbell ringing." The bit about the doorbell got to me. As if, somewhere in your psyche, some part of you thinks he's come home-and then remembers. My sister doesn't wait for the doorbell. After the girls are asleep, she walks the stone path to the empty house, lies down on the floor of what used to be her master bedroom, and wails. I hear her. I don't join her; I don't know how to join her. When the doctor delivered the final news, I put my hand against her back. "Don't touch me," she said quietly.

The pair of tulip trees outside the casita are in bloom. I've never seen them blooming before; I must never have been here at this time of year. It's not that my sister and I are not close, but we live on opposite coasts. I usually come to visit only at holidays. Lately my sense of humor has taken a sardonic, self-deprecating turn, and when I first heard about the widow board's advice, I nearly said: Expect the sister, the one you had almost given up on, to come for a visit and actually stay for a while.

I take the girls to the House of Pancakes so my sister can sleep in. She's exhausted, and the Lexapro makes it worse. I don't have any children of my own, so my mothering skills are a little ad hoc. I know there are lines that need to be drawn, I just never seem to know where to draw them. At the House of Pancakes, there are no chopsticks-a blessing. At the Chinese restaurant last week, the waiter gave the girls chopsticks made of hardened plastic, then acted surprised when they used them like drumsticks against their plates and started mock-stabbing one another. The way I see it, give a six-year-old a chopstick at your own peril. I know that elsewhere on the planet there are girls their age who have already been using chopsticks skillfully for years. With blond hair and blue eyes, these girls couldn't look less Asian. They don't even look like my sister. They look as if they were born to me.

We're sitting at a booth just inside the revolving door. The four-year-old is in a booster seat she doesn't need, but I'm letting her use it anyway. They are coloring in farm scenes with nubs of crayons.

"Tell us the story again," says the outgoing twin. During the car ride over, she has asked that we call her Coco.

"Which one?" I say.

Coco rolls her eyes. "About the chicken," she says. The shy twin slides her paper place mat away from her, but still holds her flesh-colored crayon. The youngest one continues drawing.

"Your father was doing orientation for his new consulting job," I say.

"What's the O word mean again?" Coco asks.

"When they make you do things to fit in with the group."

The shy twin tilts her head. "What's the other O word?"

"What other O word?"

"The one you taught us before? About G.o.d knowing everything?"

"Omniscient," I say, and the girls grin. "So. Your father was at orientation, and there was a scavenger hunt. The a.s.signment they gave his team was to find the freshest meat in Chinatown. And your daddy, because he was so smart, figured out a surefire way to win." The girls start giggling. They know what's coming. "The next morning, he showed up at company headquarters, with a live chicken on a leash!"

When the waiter arrives, I let them order whatever they want-stacks of pancakes topped with whipped cream and blueberry sauce, piles of hash browns, sausage patties for everyone. I have my sister's credit card in my purse. It has her husband's name on it. When you call the house, you still hear her husband's voice on the machine.

The waiter's a lefty, and his wrist bends at an acute angle when he writes.

"My name is Coco," says my niece.

"Pan-cakes for Co-co," the waiter says, sweetly.

After he's gone, the shy twin scoots back into a corner of the booth. "I want to be Saltine Teacup," she says.

"Why, Saltine Teacup. What a pretty name," I say.

The youngest one stops drawing. "I'm Pepper."

I slide forward with my elbows on the table. "Did you know that Pepper was the name of a Dalmatian my mommy and daddy had when they were first married?" The girls shake their heads: They did not know. "I have a picture of them standing in front of a cottage by a lake, with the Dalmatian in front. My mother's wearing a white bikini with black polka dots. Can you girls guess why?"

"To go swimming?" Pepper says.

"To match the dog!" I say. Coco wrinkles her nose, and we laugh. After a pause, they all start coloring again. Saltine Teacup looks up from her place mat. Superimposed on the chest of the farmer in the picture, she has drawn an enormous red heart.

"Our daddy's with your daddy now," she says.

I wipe a smudge from her cheek with my napkin. "That's right," I say.

When we get home, I let the girls tell me what to do. First we bounce around on the trampoline, then I push them on the swings, then we ride in the Barbie cars, circling the pool. I'm amazed at the stamina my sister has secretly had all these years. When they ask if we can jump on the trampoline again, I suggest we play a game called Auntie Takes a Nap. I lie down on the bounce mat and close my eyes. Coco laughs and punches me in the chest.

"Ow!" I say. It hurt more than it should have. "Please don't do that." I pull up my shirt-I'm not wearing a bra-and dip my chin, examining myself. There's a large purple bruise that covers my right breast. My niece's eyes grow wide with horror, then she starts to cry.

"It's okay, sweetie," I say. I slide my shirt down, sit up, and rub her arm. "You didn't do that. It was like that already." Before I flew out, I had to have a breast cyst aspirated. It was unlike anything I've ever experienced-the hypnotically thin needle, the oddly cheerful banter, the eerie amber fluid filling the reservoir. Had the doctor given me laughing gas? It felt as though he had, although I couldn't quite remember. I remember telling him about my brother-in-law.

"One weekend he was skiing with his children, and a month later, he was dead," I said.

"And they don't know how he contracted it?"

"No. Doesn't staph live on our bodies all the time?"

"Yes, but ... How'd it get into his blood?"

"n.o.body knows," I said. "Maybe the dentist? Or a puncture wound?" I looked at the needle, then at him, then we both became silent. He used the ultrasound on me when he was finished. Then he gave me an ice pack to stick in my bra and told me to cut down on my caffeine intake.

"Is that what causes cysts?"

"We don't really know what causes them," he said. The body and its independent desires. A number of my childless friends had begun developing uterine fibroids in the past couple of years. It was as if our wombs were saying: We don't need you! We can make things all by ourselves!

After supper the girls change into their pajamas and brush their teeth, and we all pile into the one big bed that's actually three twin-size beds squished together. Instead of reading to them from a book, they like it when I make up a story based on an old photograph. They especially like the photos where their mom and I are as young as they are now. I've brought a stack with me in my duffel bag.

"Who's that?" they say.

"That's me!"

"What's wrong with your hair?"

"We had something called perms. It was your mommy's idea. We did them at home, and they smelled bad when we went swimming."

Coco props her head on one elbow. "How bad?"

"They smelled like rotten fish. Like dead dragons. Like dead dragons who had eaten rotten fish!" I pause, and Coco squints.

"What's the matter?" she says.

"I thought of a joke, but I don't know if you're old enough to hear it."

"Tell us."

"I don't think you're old enough."

"Tell us," they say. "Tell us, tell us!" They don't say the words, but I hear them anyway: Our father is dead. For G.o.d's sake, tell us your joke.

"Okay. A girl says to her boyfriend: 'Does my breath smell like tacos?' And she breathes on his face, like this." I exhale enthusiastically. "Her boyfriend draws back and says: 'I don't know. Do you put cat s.h.i.t on your tacos?' "

Three separate looks of astonishment. No laughter.

"You're not supposed to use that word," Saltine Teacup says.

"You guys made me tell you the joke."

"That's a naughty word," says Pepper.

"I know," I say. "I'm sorry." And then I tell them how their mother and I used to scream and yell over the bad words when we listened to the eight-track of Grease while our father drove us to private school in Cambridge.

I tuck the folder of pictures back in my duffel bag and turn out the light. Through the sliding gla.s.s doors, we can see the leaves of the tulip tree shiver in the breeze.

"Let's go outside, to pray," Coco says.

"I think you're supposed to be trying to fall asleep now," I say. Their mother is asleep on a cot in the kitchen, and we'd have to walk through that room in order to get outside.

"Mommy won't mind," she says.

"Mommy will mind," I say, but before I can say anything else, she has tiptoed through the kitchen and is sliding open the gla.s.s door.

She gets down on her knees on the concrete and prays to her father. The sky above her is a flock of stars.

"I love you, Tata," she says. "You will always be the best daddy in the whole world. Always and forever and ever." I never saw a man more devoted to his kids. When he came home from work, at the sound of his voice, there would be a stampede for the door.

I kneel beside her and take her hands. "Your father loved you very much," I say.

"I know," Coco says.

Suddenly her mother is standing over us. "That's enough now," she says. "It's time for bed."

After Coco is asleep, I hover awkwardly in the kitchen. "Can I make you some hot chocolate, or anything?"

"No, thanks," my sister says. "I'm not really hungry. I just want to try to get back to sleep." And a moment later, she's in her cot on the other side of the room.

I don't want to admit that our grieving has not brought us closer together. If anything, it seems to have accentuated our differences. I believe in G.o.d; my sister does not. She lets me talk to her kids about G.o.d, and even wants them to take religious education cla.s.ses, and receive their First Communion, but I know it's a strain for her. The strain has been added to of late. A couple cornered her at the funeral and said: "If you don't believe in Jesus, you'll never see your husband again." I was flabbergasted when she told me; all I could do was shake my head and apologize. I a.s.sume these people mean well, but I suspect statements like that only drive my sister farther away.

The next morning, we're back at the House of Pancakes. Same booth, same sweet waiter. After he takes our order, he tells me I have beautiful children. This is a misperception I not only allow, but encourage. I never correct the girls when they call me Mommy. They only do so when we're out in public-at home, they have a legit Mommy-and I get a secret thrill every time they do. When has motherhood ever come so cheap? None of the diapers, all of the fun. For years, I've kept a list of places I want to take them when they're older: the British Museum Reading Room; the garden at the Musee Rodin in Paris; Sant'Eustachio Il Caffe in Rome; the Main Hall at Union Station in Washington, D.C., where the original sculptures caused a stir, so now the sentries hold modesty shields in front of their private parts. I've even planned out things I want to say. At Luray Caverns, in Virginia, there's an organ that plays through the stalact.i.tes and stalagmites. I've imagined taking the girls there, pointing at the earthen instrument, and saying: "Do you know what that means? That means someone once looked at those piles of mud and heard music."

Driving home from the House of Pancakes, we listen to a CD of the songs that played during the video portion of their father's memorial. The girls don't know that's what it is; they think it's a CD I've made. "Just Breathe" by Eddie Vedder. "Live Forever" by Billy Joe Shaver. "Wildflowers" by Tom Petty. They know the words by now, and for a few verses, we all sing: "You belong among the wildflowers, You belong in a boat out at sea.