Autobiography of Us (12 page)

All those hours lurking in the shadows, and what did I do when she finally appeared? I watched her leave. The engine revved, the car disappeared around the corner. I sat there a moment longer before turning the key in the ignition. And then I drove as fast as I dared, heading west toward the water, past the cliffs that sloped down to the beach, past the ice-cream stands and the lines of cars stopped at the side of the road with the tourists lined up along the shoulder. I drove all the way to the exit sign for Malibu before I pulled over to the side of the road and turned the engine off. I sat there a long time. The sun was dropping toward the hills along the western edge of Pasadena when I came back off the highway; it was nearly dark by the time I turned into the driveway at El Molino and let myself in the back door.

I don’t know that I can explain why I did what I did next. I must have felt there was nothing left to do, that desperate feeling I’d had as a child when I gazed up at the sky and tried to imagine it going on forever or thought about the fact that my parents would die one day, that I would die too. You will have guessed by now that I hadn’t heard a word from any of them—not just Alex but Lindsey and Betsy too, Betsy the only one to come to the phone when I gave up and called around at the end of that first week, trying each of them in turn. She was leaving for Tahoe the next day, she said, sounding harried. She’d been so busy,
gosh
, sorry, but she’d have to call me when she got a second to breathe. Did I mind? Was that—she really did have to go, sorry, sorry, we’d talk soon. I don’t know that I’d ever felt so lonely. Nor had I ever had so much to say, the words jamming up like fruitflies in a jar from one of Mr. Percy’s experiments, the stopper sealing everything airtight.

But my mind was blank when I pulled out the sewing kit my mother had given me for Christmas one year—or that’s what I told myself, anyway, the thing unzippered quickly enough as I sat with it on my knees. I drew the needle up the length of my arm three times: first the brachial, next the basilic, the cephalic. The shock was enough to keep the sting at bay, long enough that I didn’t stop until I looked down and saw the blood springing up against my skin. That red, just as Alex had predicted, surprising.

I told my parents on a Sunday afternoon. I didn’t name any names. I said only that I was pregnant, that I was more or less six weeks along, and that I was sorry. The three of us sat in the garden with a pitcher of iced tea sugared to an aching sweetness. For the first few moments, neither of them said a word. My mother gripped her glass of iced tea as though it was the only thing keeping her upright; next to her, my father stared at the tiger lilies with an expression of faint bewilderment.

“I don’t suppose…” my mother began. “That is—”

She got up and went into the house. Her words came out in a sharp staccato—
yes, no, I see, no, please.
Then came the click of the receiver, then another phone call. Her voice kept up a steady stream of noise like a typewriter. My father stayed where he was, his kind face pulled taut as a sheet. When my mother came back out, she lit a cigarette right away.

“Tuesday.” She knocked the ashes into the heavy glass tray with a flick of her pinky. “Father Timothy says he thinks they’ll take you as soon as a week from Tuesday. He’s making a few calls. Only eight hours by bus, apparently, right through the Sierras, and he says the sisters are actually quite selective.” She touched one palm to her right temple as though pressing something back into place. “As selective as they can be.”

My father sat with his hands against the table, bracing himself.

“He was very kind about the whole thing.”

“He is,” my father said slowly, “an exceptionally kind man, Father Timothy.”

“We’ll tell everyone you’re going abroad. Art history and language in—” My mother tapped her finger against the table. “Italy, there you are. That’s what the girls at all the best New England schools do, isn’t it? It won’t be so bad.” My mother smiled in a way that looked painful, as though the curve of her lips might crack her skin wide open. “Father Timothy said they do a wonderful job keeping everyone up on their studies. You won’t even have to worry about falling behind. Seven, eight months? They’ll pass just like that,” she said. She was speaking very quickly now, almost eagerly. “He says everything will be fine. He says you’ll be very comfortable up there, mountain air and all. Nice girls, he said, mostly from the area, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have manners. You might even make a friend or two. Father Timothy says you’ll be surprised at how fast the time goes. He says you’ll be back before you—” She held her cigarette next to her cheek, the glowing tip a tiny third eye, and then she put her hand over her mouth and went inside.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the table, and my father nodded so slowly that for a moment I wasn’t sure he’d moved at all. I wished desperately that he would look at me, that he would shake his head and call me
Queenie
, but he only sat there another minute or two, holding the edge of the table as though it might break if he let go, and then he got up and followed my mother inside.

* * *

I’ll say this for my mother: When she set her mind to doing something, there was no stopping her. The story of my study abroad must have burned through town like something fueled by kerosene. The phone began to ring the very next morning, the shrill buzz stopping and starting until she picked up the receiver and took it off the hook. From time to time, the front doorbell trilled. I could tell by the way my mother’s voice changed when it was for me, which it mostly was. What mail came for me that week I threw away unopened, the few times I let myself retrieve an envelope from the wastepaper bin and open the invitation to a Phi Beta picnic or a birthday party at the club more painful than I cared to admit. A card from Betsy started off by saying formally that she was sorry to have missed me, that she’d heard the news through so and so all the way up in Tahoe and wanted to send a proper farewell, that she was
exhilarated
to think of me
traveling!!!
—but that was as far as I could go before dropping the card back in the bin.

There
was
one person who made it through the barricade. When my mother said my name outside the bedroom door one afternoon, I heard the slightest catch in her voice. I opened the door to find her standing off to the side with a curtain folded over one arm, pincushion balanced in the crook of her elbow.

“You have a visitor,” she said, clearing her throat. “And he doesn’t have much time.” She hesitated. “You might want to brush your hair. Freshen up a bit.” She turned away and then, abruptly, turned back. “Rebecca.”

I was struck in that moment by how young she looked. Of course, she was no more than forty at the time—young by today’s standards to be the mother of a twenty-one year old—but in those days I thought of her as a mother. Not old, I don’t mean, but ageless.

“If you thought the identity of the person in question was important—” she went on haltingly. “That is, I assume if you thought it bore any weight—”

I shook my head so violently I felt as though it might snap right off my neck. “He’s nobody. Nobody at all.”

My mother stood there another moment; when she spoke, her voice was flooded with relief. “Go on down, then. You won’t want to keep him waiting.”

I came down the stairs slowly, still not understanding, and there was Oliver Hinden standing in front of the door, his dark hair buzzed close to his head. When he saw me, he put his hand to his forehead in a mock salute. The sun lit him from behind like a stained-glass saint.

“At your service,” he said, clicking his heels. “Yours, God’s, and the United States of America’s.”

“Don’t,” I said, rudely, and then I half-ran the rest of the way down the stairs to make up for it. “You’re going?” I said it into his shoulder, the starched cotton of his shirt rough against my cheek.

“Looks like it,” he said. I didn’t have to see his face to know he was smiling.

We sat on the porch and talked, incredibly, about nothing. He said something about the weather and the threat of a storm the next afternoon. I asked if he’d heard about the forest fire that had damaged a few houses out by the canyon and he said he had. I remember I was holding one of the cloth serviettes Mother liked to put out with the cookies, and as I sat there I closed my fingers around the balled-up cloth and squeezed hard enough that I gasped from the pain when I finally let go.

“You’re alright, then,” he said at last.

“Sure I am.” I said it with a cheerfulness that must have struck both of us as false.

Oliver frowned. “Because this study-abroad business…” He cleared his throat. He was so deliberate with his words, so careful: It was one of the things I’d always liked best about him, his unwillingness to say anything he didn’t mean. “I would have figured you’d want to enjoy being a senior. Stick around for the celebration.”

“I could say the same about you.”

He pressed the tips of those big fingers together. “Rebecca—”

“It must be exciting,” I broke in. My hands were shaking as I refilled our glasses from the pitcher of ice water. I was so blind in that moment, so sure of what he was about to say—some bumbling confession of love, I thought, a soldier’s last romantic stand. We’d been friends all our lives. I didn’t think I could bear the idea of one more little change.

“Which part?”

“Vietnam,” I said, surprised. “Defeating Communism.”

He shook his head, smiling—in agreement, I thought at the time. Of course I was saying all the wrong things, none of it what he wanted to hear, none of it important in the least. “I’ve got training for a day or two,” he went on. “Time enough to make a fool of myself, fumble my way through the drills.”

“But then you’ll fight, won’t you?”

“Sure I will,” he said quickly. “Don’t worry.” He made a move as though to cover my hand with his, and I flinched. I would have done anything to take it back. But Oliver just shook his head again and stood, brushing crumbs off the front of his pants. “I’ll make everyone proud.”

Oh, I’d heard of dodgers. We all had. There was a boy who’d grown up down the block who went north to Berkeley for college—Peter Jacobson, the son of a chemist—and later I’d hear how he painted himself green and showed up for his physical in nothing but his underwear. He was thrown in jail for it: It was one way to escape. In general, we held a very dim view of deserters. We pretended they didn’t exist, mostly, the ones that ran off or made excuses, the sleepwalkers, the lazy eyes, the sudden homosexuals. A disgrace to the country, we called them, a shame to their families. We didn’t acknowledge the other ones either, the boys and girls who linked arms and circled the induction centers, the ones holding up their white placards—
USE YOUR HEAD, NOT YOUR DRAFT CARD
or, simply,
RESIST.
I didn’t know the first thing about what might draw any young man to battle, but I’m sure I clung to some vague cliché of bravery—a swell of patriotism at the sight of the American flag snapping briskly in the wind, the boyish desire to win.

“It’s good you’re doing your duty,” I said finally.

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“Loads of things,” I said, surprised by his vehemence. “It’s not like any of the other boys are signing on—”

But he’d stopped listening. “I’m not a brain, not like Buzz or Doc. You know that as well as I do. I’m not like the rest of them—headed for law school or medical school.” He looked at me pleadingly. “My father keeps telling me I’m not buckling down. It’s a question of diligence, he says. Strength of will. Guess I’ve proved the most awful kind of disappointment—”

“Oliver,” I said sharply. “You’re his
son
.”

“I look like my mother,” he went on, in a low voice. “Have I ever told you that? I look exactly like her. Sometimes I think he hates me for reminding him of her.”

“He loves you—” I began, but he cut me off right away.

“I’m not even a decent athlete. No coordination to speak of. But I can move, can’t I? You remember when we used to play kick the can? I was good at it—running and hiding. I was good at finding places no one would think to look.” He hardly seemed to be talking to me anymore. He’d turned his face toward the edge of the backyard where the hedges clustered close together, as though he was talking to them, to the dark spaces between their branches. “I’ll be fine,” he said.

“More than fine
,”
I said staunchly. “You’re going to make us proud, remember?”

He sighed, and I saw I’d disappointed him. “Sure I will.”

We fell silent for a minute or two. I drank my water down like I was the one headed off to war, and then I pushed the crumbs from my sugar cookie around my plate with my finger, starting up again with something silly—a question about the yard or pointing out my mother’s roses. It was a relief when the screen door banged shut and my father came out into the bright sun, blinking.

“An honor,” he said, shaking Oliver’s hand, “to welcome a man of duty. Serving God along with your country, bless you.” His face creased into a smile, the first I’d seen in days. “Your father must be proud.” My father didn’t care to talk about the war—that one or this one—though it seemed to please him all the same to see the young men in coffee shops across town with their khakis and crew cuts, their faces freshly shaven, gleaming.

“Yessir,” Oliver said, coloring. “I certainly hope he is, sir.”

He left the very next morning. The local paper ran his picture that Sunday along with the others who’d enlisted that week, Oliver’s face serious in the way of professional portraits at that time, his eyes looking off to some point beyond the photographer’s left shoulder. But I prefer to remember him the way he was that afternoon, sitting across the table from me with his legs splayed out in front of him, one of my mother’s sugar cookies resting on the rim of his plate as though he planned, at any moment, to pick it up and take a bite. We didn’t speak of him after he left, my father and I. When I heard the Hindens’ car start up early the next morning, I knew as I lay there, the heat of the day already turning my room too warm, that my father was hearing the same thing. He of all people must have known what that meant: the turn of the key, the motor stuttering to life, the silent drive to the train station, Dr. Hinden’s eyes glassy as he waved goodbye to his eldest son. The unsteady hiccup of Oliver’s heart under his army issue coat. My father knew better than any of us what lay ahead for a young soldier, and he might—had we been a different sort of family, had it been a different time—have said something in the days that followed Oliver’s departure, offered some small consolation for the loss of my old friend to something as terrible as war. But by that point the war was just another thing that went unmentioned in my house. Something of little consequence, I mean, next to what I had done.