So, in preparation for his son's future, his father had made John play a game of “fantasy stocks.” Choosing shares with a pretend bank account, he taught him how to pick “winners.” IRAs, money-markets, futures, junk bonds. There were quizzes and transaction fees. Daily calls. Then he could read the sports page if he liked, unless he would rather make his father happy and scour the rest of the
Herald
for trends. But instead of the business section, John developed an obsession with the obituaries, people's lives laid out in a paragraph. Eventually his mother discovered his notebooks filled with imaginary obits for his family and friends, the neighbors and the postman. John's father concluded that his son was a failure, and it became clear to John that any success he might experience would be looked upon with disappointment by the man who had leaked life inside his mother while simultaneously sucking it out. But his father's real obituary was forthcoming. Men like him didn't see sixty too often. They died of strokes and colon cancer, overdosing on red meat and Black Label. John looked forward to writing his father's obituary. It wouldn't take long or be much of a headline, possibly only the words Also Dead Today. Or a small listing: Survived by. His own name beneath his mother's.
He felt a tinge of guilt as he watched his father's hand shake with a tremor of Parkinson's, a dark prayer answered. His father tried to steady the wave but the quake rolled down his arm, shoulder trembling, face twisting with the sting of palsy.
“You never listen to me anyway,” his father said.
John wanted to disagree, tell his father he had heard everything, but it seemed cruel to attack a man whose own body had turned against him. His father backed away, ambling to a rhythm that only the marrow of his bones could understand, and went over to the liquor cabinet to pour himself a drink. Half the booze made it into the glass, the rest ran down his wrist onto the floor. A puddle formed at his feet. His father swallowed the contents of the tumbler, grimacing at his choice of medicine.
John heard his mother in the kitchen, banging pots and pans. Well-done meat, limp vegetables, plenty of potatoes. The menu never changed. John didn't miss eating at the family table, his mother serving the meal, then doing her crossword so she didn't have to watch her husband stabbing the meat with his knife and fork, challenging the food until he defeated every last bite. Gibsons were fast eaters, food defined by texture not taste. His father sat down in his chair waiting for the routine to begin, looking away from his only heir. John turned to leave. No tears all the way around.
So now here he was staring past the dashboard of the Datsun at the swaying trees, their branches swinging with suffusive intent, each limb fighting for space amidst the others. Leaves failing to cover the conflict. The largest of the trees let out a high-pitched creak from somewhere within its bark. That one should be cut down, John thought. What had his father whispered passing the casket at Grandma's funeral? “Damage control.”
John recalled the relief in his father's eyes after throwing the first shovelful of dirt at Grandma's grave site. Later, while eating ice cream off a paper plate, he had heard the phrase “self-quarantine,” uncertain whether someone was referring to Grandma packing up and moving to California or how his father had decided to stay put in Florida. John still couldn't believe she was dead. He remembered their last conversation, three days before her death.
Holding the telephone receiver in his office at Leggiere and Philips, John didn't hear the condemned roller coaster he had come to know as Grandma's voice, starting low and rising decibel by decibel, lurching upward with regrets and misgivings until it
shrieked on its tracks, dropping into drunken grumbling. She had found a pace for her thoughts that carried with it the unsettling notes of finality. Instead of singing like a carnival ride, she seemed to hum an aria of sadness. It caught him off guard, not because she had called him at workâGrandma rarely telephoned him at home for fear of reaching “The Ivory Girl,” as she had dubbed Christinaâit was her tone that was unnerving. The calm urgency of someone who had prepared for catastrophe all their lives and had finally spotted locusts on the horizon.
John was eating a Cuban sandwich. He tried to do something else when he talked to Grandma, an excuse not to listen closely. If he did, he found himself hearing a kind of truth nobody else spoke, recruiting him into a conspiracy against himself. If any of his colleagues caught him in his cubicle on one of these calls, they teased him. He had told them stories about Grandma and they thought it was hilarious the way he could hardly tolerate a five-minute conversation with the woman. They made sinister Nosferatu gestures with their fingers and drinking motions with imaginary bottles in their hands. They knew it was Grandma because John's expression grew serious like he was contemplating the laws of physics instead of trying to create a mailer. The office secretary thought his discomfort was cute, everybody loving a crazy relative as long as they weren't related. Normally, John welcomed the distractions, but on this day he found their banter caustic and accusing.
Bean Bean, his friend and co-worker, whose real name was Benito Beñes, a Cuban whose parents had fled Fidel in the sixties by floating to America on a makeshift raft of inner tubes stripped from their Chrysler Imperial, called John's name out in the voice John used to mimic his grandmother. John scowled. Bean Bean's hands were full of fliers in three different fonts. Another arbitrary aesthetic decision. He smiled at John and his “abuela loca.” When John pressed the receiver to Bean Bean's ear so he could hear the source, it ceased being funny.
“What's that noise?” Grandma wanted to know. “Feeding time at the zoo?”
“Sorry, Grandma,” he said, swallowing a lump of sandwich and waving away Bean Bean.
“If you were sorry, you'd visit,” she replied, telling him that he sounded older than he ought to be, adding, “It's amazing how
people change if they're capable of it. Human beings have a huge capacity to better themselves, although they rarely ever do. But their opportunities never cease.”
John glanced at the other Leggiere and Philips employees bustling about with tired eyes. The fluorescent lighting sucked color from everyone's skin, even the sunworshippers who spent their weekends darkening their tropical tansâthe Long Island refugees and Jewish girls who now looked Jamaican. He knew half the office was involved in some deadline with an unhappy client. The other half was updating their resumes. Typical Thursday. The custodian changed the lining on the wastepaper baskets. Bean Bean had moved to the water cooler where he tried to avoid eye contact with their boss and a secretary he had slept with on a rum drunk. Everyone wanted to hit the beach or go home. They were pushing sand against the tide. That was one of Grandma's favorite expressions. She used it to describe the first sixty-five years of her life.
“There's so much bullshit to sort through before you get to yourself,” she had told John. “I wish I could have started earlier. My race is about run. But you could take advantage of this. And as you go on, I go on. I'm in your blood, probably more so than your father. Sometimes it skips a generation, the desire to be alive.”
John turned the key and stepped on the accelerator. The Datsun swung around in a semicircle off the shoulder of the road and back onto the highway. A rear door opened, threatening to spill his suitcase and the cardboard boxes full of everything he had flown out with him from Miami, but the door hit its hinge, springing back before anything was lost. He barely noticed, foot flush with floorboard, eyes fixed ahead. He saw a field of sheep grazing among archaic farm equipment, parted out and left to rust, tillers and thrashers, diggers and planters. Machinery of a bygone era. There was a pile of tractor tires, a stack of industrial pipe, broken cinder blocks. Smoke from a burn barrel gathered in a billow above the remnants of a feed barn. Metal stakes of a new vineyard flickered the reflections of anticipated growth in the periphery of his vision. He didn't bother to check his rearview mirror or feel sympathy for his compatriot left back in the ditch. He concentrated on the road stretching out before him.
And there it was again, the town where Grandma had spent the last twelve years of her life. The town where she had willed
him his future. A green sign riddled with bullet holes and dents pounded by beer bottles flung from speeding trucks, said, “Boonville, pop 715.” He blinked. Boonville, pop 715.
“I
'm a feminist, but I can still have fun!” a woman's voice boomed from the dining room of the Boonville Hotel.
John was sitting at the bar. He threw back a shot of whiskey and took a swig of his beer chaser. After revisiting the mile-long strip of Highway 128 that was Boonville, he had decided he needed a drink. Maybe two drinks, stiff ones. Possibly three. Then I can assess the situation objectively, he convinced himself, and call Grandma's friend to get the keys to her cabin or make a run for the airport while my bags are still packed.
“That's the problem with the Movement,” stated the voice from the dining room. “I can't be a part of it if I want to get laid.”
The bartender shook his head. He had gentle blue eyes and stiff whiskers, his silver hair cut into a style that may have been fashionable some Sunday-go-to-meeting fifty years ago. He wore a wine-stained apron and a denim shirt with embroidery above each pocket depicting two blossoming roses. John didn't know if the shirt was a uniform or something the old man would wear anyway, not every day, but to get gussied up. He reminded John of the wagon-train cook in an old Western, the one the bad guys shot to let you know they were bad.
The bartender checked the room to see if he could be overheard, then fixed an elbow on the bar in front of John.
“Before this was the Boonville Hotel, it was the New Boonville Hotel,” he said, voice gravelly, furthering the John Ford effect. “Hands down, it had the ugliest sign of any restaurant in Northern California.”
John tried to imagine the sort of monstrosity an entrepreneur
in this area might hang to attract passing motorists, thinking about the signs that cluttered Highway 1 in Florida, transforming what used to be a scenic view into a gaudy sales pitch.
“This building dates back to before I was born, which is saying something for anything standin' in these parts,” the bartender elaborated. “But that sign was plastic and neon tacked on like an outhouse at the Taj Mahal.”
John nodded, pushing his shot glass forward, indicating he didn't need another, although he wanted one. The bartender dispensed of the empty into a three-tubbed sink filled with soapy, clear, and blue-dyed water. He ran the dirty glass through the three pools and set it in a drying rack.
“But now that it's gone, we got her,” he gestured back toward the woman's voice, a trail of water following his hand. “Not an even exchange.”
John's head began to transmit a serene static. Hard alcohol hit him right away. Maybe he didn't want another. He took a drink of his Boont Amber to keep it rolling, a beer he learned from the menu was brewed across the street at the Buckhorn Saloon, which operated a “micro-brewery” in its basement. By the taste of it, that sounded about right.
He had spotted the Buckhorn on his drive into town, a redwood structure that resembled a hunting lodge, the sort of place where several televisions would be showing marginal sporting events, steeplechasing, kick-boxing, Australian-rules football. They had the same kind of bars in Miami with tropical motifs: “Tommy's Tuna Hut,” “Jim's Trophy Room,” “Danny's Dolphin Lounge.” But the Buckhorn appeared to be a new business; nothing about it sagged like the rest of the town.
John had chosen to patronize the Boonville Hotel because of the fancier cars in the parking lot. He wanted to see the best Boonville had to offer and also check for a vacancy in case Grandma's cabin was unlivable. It was the only hotel he had seen since Cloverdale, another wide spot in the road thirty miles back toward San Francisco. Unfortunately, the hostess of the Boonville Hotel informed him that it wasn't a working hotel anymore, “just a restaurant and bar.” John didn't press for details. He'd settle for a drink. But apparently the bartender had taken it upon himself to fill him in on the history.
“The owners of this place were a couple from Frisk,” he told
John. “They were the ones responsible for the sign and puttin' art on the walls, fancy wine, espresso, ten bucks a salad: piece of lettuce, rabbit's shit worth of goat cheese. California Nouvelle Cuisine. Told the food critics they grew everything in the garden, organic. Yuppies and hippies love their organics. They came out of the woodwork to eat at the New Boonville Hotel. Then all hell broke loose.”
People didn't often share information with John, who had overheard his friends describe him as “fiercely loyal” and “the last to know,” the latter attribute lending itself to the first. He had the instincts of a mutt: feed me, pet me, fetch. What facts he had discovered, he had sought out to routine disappointment. The truth hurt. Still, he didn't want to be left out. He waited for the bartender's bone toss, feigning the composure of someone who could keep a secret. The bartender leaned in further, obviously having taken the job for the social aspects, not the paycheck.
He told John the former owners were bad businesspeople, running up debts and burning bridges. The wait-staff began demanding payment for their shifts in advance. A cook once quit three times in the same week, walking out during the dinner rush. They had to bribe him back with a case of wine. One night, tired of the battle, the couple “Z'ed” the register and skipped town without paying anyone. Two weeks later, they hired someone to rob the restaurant, then claimed theft and collected insurance money from a post office box in Mendocino.
“Big goddamned stink,” the bartender said. “Locals started lootin' the place. See, your average logger or Mexican couldn't afford to eat here, still can't. They wouldn't let 'em hang out in the bar either. Yuppies in six-hundred-dollar suits don't want to look at rednecks in twenty-dollar jeans. Most folks just took what they thought was owed. I sent my grandkid into the wine cellar, but the half-wit came back with six bottles of grenadine. Been drinkin' Shirley Temples to make my toes curl. But now that couple runs a restaurant up in Seattle or Paris or somewhere. Rich people can get away with murder.”
“Didn't the local authorities do anything?” John said, rinsing his throat with the rest of his beer.
“Local authorities?” the bartender laughed. “All we got is Cal, the resident deputy. Other than him, there's no law. He's got better things to do than guard this place. There's a fight pretty near every
week at the Lodge, folks drivin' around higher 'n a billy, four-wheelin', shootin' guns. Besides, his response time ain't what I call inspirin'. By the time he gets his slow butt out of bed, crime's been done. Hold up a minute.”
The bartender tramped three paces to take a couple's order, waiting patiently while a bald man in a sports jacket asked about the “nose” and “acidity” of various wines on the wine list. After a litany of questions concerning “harvests,” “fermentation,” and “barrel selection,” he inquired about the house red, asking if it was “full-bodied.” The bartender answered, “Like Liz Taylor on a chocolate binge.” Uncorking a bottle labeled Edmeades, he poured two glasses with the nonchalance of someone who had spent more than their share of time behind a slab of mahogany. The bald man shoved his face into the glass, held it up to the light, swirled it, and then took a sip.
“Jammy,” he said, as if he had stomped the grapes himself.
His companion sampled hers, seemingly satisfied. The bartender returned the bottle to its shelf, marked a check with a pencil and set the bill in front of them in a brandy snifter. The two kissed as if the bartender's tip was to witness their affection. He swabbed a wet spot to their right with a towel, wiped his hands on his apron, and slid back to John.
“I should have left them the bottle,” he whispered. “And bet they couldn't make it back to the bright lights inside an hour. Highpockety prack.”
John wasn't familiar with the expression, wondering if it was a bit of the local language, but as a native Floridian used to tourists making the rounds in Mickey Mouse ears, he felt he got the gist of it.
“Where you from?” the bartender asked, peeking at the couple like he had served them hemlock and was waiting for it to kick in. “You look like you got more sense than to be from around here.”
“Miami,” John answered.
“Should have known by the tan,” the bartender said. “Almost mistook you for a workin' man.”
“I work,” John replied, not wanting to talk shop about the job he had quit. “But my grandmother died recently, so I'm moving out here into her place.”
“Sorry to hear that,” the bartender said.
“That I'm moving to Boonville or that my grandmother died?” John asked.
“Both,” the bartender told him. “This town is hard on the young and it's never easy losin' family. Plus, bad luck runs in threes. You got somethin' else waitin' on you.”
“I'm not superstitious,” John said, although he was the kind of person who hedged his bets, throwing salt, knocking wood, avoiding the underneath of ladders. He wouldn't stoop for a penny on the ground unless it was faced heads up. Out loud, he claimed superstitions were for idiots. In private, he read his horoscope and cringed at unfortuitous fortune cookies. Christina once rearranged their furniture for good feng shui, demanding he buy a mirror for the entryway of the apartment to access their “career center.” Why pull on trouble's braid? He did as he was told. He didn't solicit occult information, but always felt better if someone was predicting happiness instead of doom.
“Grandma and I weren't close,” he told the bartender, trying to distance himself from a woman whose whole life seemed snakebit.
Edna Woodhull Nesbitt had been born in the wrong place at the wrong time, not that there would have been a right place or right time. If you had asked her, she would have told you the world was rigged against all women. But being born eccentric in Arizona in 1915 without a father did her no favors. On her seventh birthday, her schoolmarm widow of a mother gave her a copy of
The Works of Emily Dickinson
, relaying emphatically, “This is our legacy. Stay away from those Bronte sisters.” Edna carried it with her wherever she went, sitting for hours in the Tucson sun, reading over and over, “I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be.” She took long walks and had conversations with dead writers. She was at the top of her class at school, but indifferent to classmates. “Why doesn't she come play?” the other girls would ask. Edna thought the answer was obvious.
When her figure took shape at sixteen, it isolated her even further. Occasionally, a teen smelling of pomade and puberty would cross the cafeteria, eyes of the school upon him, and ask her to a movie. “Are you kidding?” she would say, unsure if the boy was being sincere, thinking to herself, “Wasn't he making fun of my breasts in gym class?” Her confusion sounded like a refusal and the boy would slink back to his lunchtable pals, cursing,
“Stuck-up bitch!” High school ended. She didn't go to prom. She didn't care. She got to go to college, the other girls didn't.
She matriculated at Arizona State to study teaching like her mother. The girls in her dormitory compared her looks to Myrna Loy's and were shocked that she had never dated. Edna was astounded that they had no intention of pursuing a career outside of being a rich man's wife. They called her “the last suffragette.” “We already have the vote,” they'd say. “What else do you want?” Edna didn't know, something. But to appease them, she dated Wayne Gibson, a business major from Honolulu who kept his tan year-round as captain of the A.S.U. golf team. She went along with the relationship like a guest served burnt food, forcing a look of satisfaction, never asking for seconds. They graduated, Edna with honors, Wayne a scratch golfer. They married and moved to Hawaii where Wayne was handed the family fortune, which he dropped in a series of bad investments. After selling their beachfront property, stating, “Nobody's going to want to vacation here anymore, not after Pearl Harbor,” he invested in a chain of miniature-golf-course-Laundromats. They moved to Florida. Babies came, one after the other; Wayne named them, Edna raised them. They bought twin beds. Too late.
“None of it was my idea,” Grandma revealed to John after his grandfather had died. “I never wanted to teach, I never wanted children,” she paused, taking a pop from her glass of gin. “And I never wanted your grandfather. The only thing he knew how to do was play golf and lose money. I used to sit in our house and pray to God he'd die of heatstroke on the tee of the eighteenth hole. I'd take over the finances, and he wouldn't get to finish his round.”
“Imagine,” she continued, John transfixed, “We had once owned acres of Waikiki Beach and then there we were in the concrete squalor of South Florida sitting behind that âPutt and Dry' with only a pocket full of quarters. And once we had children, your grandfather disappeared. I'll tell you, his absence became the only thing he had to offer me. This is a man's world. They don't even let women think about the possibilities. Now that he's really gone, I'm doing as I please!”
She took their bank book and her dog-eared copy of Emily Dickinson and flew to the self-actualizing confines of the Left Coast. The answer was obvious.
For the bartender's benefit, John briefly explained how Grandma had moved from Florida when he was fourteen, communicating through letters and telephone calls. She sent books for his birthday: Grace Paley, Edith Wharton, Dawn Powell. It was part of a deal that hinged on the understanding that he would never visit and she would never return. In fact, he still had to get the keys to her cabin from a friend of hers named Pensive Prairie Sunset.
“Aw shit!” the bartender let loose. “Is your grandmother's place up on Manchester Road?”
“I think so,” John answered, reaching into his pocket for a slip of paper ripped from a pad of Leggiere and Philips stationery, the scrawl close to illegible, as if he had hoped to get lost from his own directions.