Digging Out (15 page)

I laugh, waiting for him to say how young I am, or how could I ever let it happen, and where is his father —for him to judge me. Instead, he merely picks Dafydd up and gives him a little cuddle. “We’re gonna be great friends, right, boy?”

Of course I am relieved that he doesn’t question me, yet I also
wonder why he doesn’t. He knows nothing about my prior life and it doesn’t seem to matter to him. He seems to care only that I’m different from his other friends —wild long hair, long skirts, my accent, which he comments on endlessly, making me read Shakespeare out loud.

“You are an intriguing foreigner, a secret.”

Now Marc comes over to Bed’s house nearly every afternoon. We sit for hours on the front porch, in the back garden. He talks about growing up on “the ranch.” How he helped the Mexican laborers who came in illegally for the summer months to pick grapefruits and oranges. How he’d ride his horse over the dusty hills to meet his friends under an old willow. He has blue ribbons and trophies from summer rodeos and holds the ranch record for saddling and unsaddling a quarter horse.

“The downside about those ranch years was when the cattle were castrated. I’d go watch. Those workers would make a big deal of cutting the balls off and then they’d fling them at me. Said it would make a man of me. What it made was a vegetarian for so many years I can’t count. I’ve only just begun eating meat again.”

Marc notices views, the skyline, sunsets and the rich deep purple bougainvillea that grows outside my sister’s house. He talks about his feelings, tries to get me to talk about mine.

Reading my latest poem, he challenges my use of adverbs. “Very,” he says, “is a useless word. It actually lessens the power of the word it stands next to. Mark Twain always said, ‘If you see an adverb, shoot it!’ What’s bigger than big? ‘Very’ doesn’t make it bigger. What’s more beautiful than beautiful, except for you? See how very stupid ‘very’ is? Dafydd is big. You are beautiful.”

“You
are brilliant,” I tease. But he does seem to know everything. He seems so secure, solid —romantic, too. I forgive him his arrogance.

Dafydd looks forward to showing off for Marc, roaring round the cement patio on his Big Wheel, throwing himself up on Marc’s lap, where he falls asleep, comfortable as a cat. In those moments my mind brushes up against thoughts of Evan. Marc says it makes him feel alive to be around us, makes him feel useful.

I begin to let myself feel protected, to convince myself that my past is past. Life is so different here, the weather so beautiful. Easy.
On the front porch, in the back garden, at the market. How can Evan, Gram, Mam and Da survive here when I have been reinvented?

For his senior project, Marc decides to set music to
Our Town.

“God, I love this play,” he whispers, leaning over me at the rehearsal —my fourth time seeing it with him.

“This is where I want the voices to really build —after she’s chosen the time in her life which has been most precious to her —and she’s back in it for just that moment. I want voices, a cappella, rising over this speech. Alys, try to imagine.”

And then Emily says, “Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it —every, every minute?”

“That’s the spot. Right there,” he says.

As the rehearsal continues we both watch quietly. I think about Hallie and for just a split second I allow myself to imagine her my age, still alive.

Later on, Marc leans over and whispers, “If you got to choose the time when you’d come back, Alys, when would it be?”

“Right now,” I say, without a moment’s hesitation. “Right this very minute. Sitting next to you, enjoying your brilliance,” I tease. But mostly I mean it. Mostly in Marc’s presence I feel shielded from harm. Except for the part that is always waiting for the next tip to slide.

Marc laughs, softly touching the top of my hand.

As we grow closer, Marc shares more details about his family. He was born in Santa Monica, lived near the beach, went to a small grammar school where he learned to play the piano at an after-school program. His father had a heart attack when he was six and that’s when they moved to the ranch.

“It was my dad’s idea. He wanted to make our lives smaller, give us space, quiet. Probably thought it would give him more control. But we were miles and miles from the ocean, so at first I hated it. My mother hated it even worse than I did. She just kind of stayed around the house doing nothing while my dad went to the office each day to sell insurance and I went to school.

“I’d get home from school and she would complain about everything —the town, the people, my dad. In her awful need, she confided things to me that she shouldn’t. She didn’t seem to notice

that I was only seven. She complained nonstop about not having enough money, yet she never worked a day in her life.”

“But she raised three children,” I say. “That must count for something.”

“It counts. But, Alys, she was really smart. She read a lot, published essays in the local paper. When she was a teenager she studied art. All of us, including her, would have been happier if she’d had a life, some kind of real job.”

“What about your sister and brother?”

“Well, my sister’s nine years older than I am. When I was growing up, I looked up to her. She was my hero. Basically, she told my mom what to do about everything, including me. In high school, she saved money from after-school jobs and bought a convertible Pontiac. I remember her riding around with the top down and bright scarves on her head and patent leather pumps. She had them in every imaginable color lined up in her closet. She and her girlfriends would tool around, Bob Dylan and the Beatles blaring from the radio. Sometimes she’d let boys a lot older drive her car. I was just a nuisance. I was only cute when she didn’t have to baby-sit, when I left her alone. She paid me to stay out of her way with Dots and Jujubees.

“My brother’s six years older. When we lived on the ranch, he played baseball and was always at practice or playing with the kids who lived down the road. Mostly what I remember is that he had firecrackers and a surfboard.

“Once my parents let the two of them baby-sit together. About twenty minutes after they left, my brother and sister tied a rope around my waist and swung me from the chandelier in the main hall.

“ ‘This will keep you in one place till Mom and Dad get back,’ they said, slamming the front door on their way out.”

“And what about your childhood, Alys?”

I avoid talking about my own past.

Marc invites me to his senior prom. I shop for a prom dress and find the perfect one —sleeveless and slinky black. When I slip it on and pose in front of the mirror, I admire my body, more of a woman’s body than Elodie’s or the other girls in my class. I guess having a baby has done that for me. I wear Bed’s pearls and black shoes with
just a hint of a heel. Pink lipstick. Marc picks me up in his father’s old blue Volvo, surprising me with a small bunch of flowers behind his back. I am reminded of my fourteenth birthday —the last I spent with both Parry and Evan. Marc holds out orange poppies, sticking me when he pins them to my dress.

“Ow.”

“Oh, Alys, I’m so sorry.” He slips his hand under my dress to fasten the pin at the top.

“It’s all right.” My knees go a bit weak, at the warmth of his hand against my breast.

Dafydd, at the door watching us, says, “Can I go?”

Marc pats him on his head, Dafydd’s hair still nearly white, saying, “Not tonight, boy, not tonight. Your mama and I are going out on a real date tonight, alone. No kids —not even you, the best kid of all.”

Before the prom, we stop at the beach, take our shoes off and run from the parking lot through soft sand to the water. I spread a blanket so near the water’s edge that we can feel the mist. I want to take my dress off and run into the waves. Marc’s brought a fifth of bourbon, two glasses, a bag of ice and some cola. As he pours us drinks, he says, “Man, look at that sun.” Huge, bright orange, slipping behind the horizon into the deep green sea. Neither of us says much more, but when he brushes my hand, I shiver. He has touched me a million times but I have never felt quite like I do in that moment. Then, for just an instant when I look at him, I see Evan. My God. I close my eyes, breathe in, the feeling of Evan sweeping through me. For a second more, I keep hold of him deep inside me. When I open my eyes, Marc is staring at me.

“You look terrific, Alys.”

Hours later, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, we dance every dance together, ignoring people who try to cut in. We hold hands during dinner. I touch his knee under the table.

A month later, when Marc is supposed to go off to college in Ohio, he transfers to UCLA. We find a small house in Point Dume, near Zuma Beach, overlooking the ocean. I have one more year of high school.

Two years later, while making dinner one night, Marc proposes to me.

* * *

Before long we are in our third house together. Although this one is small, we own it. Already it is piled high with books and CDs, our kitchen bulging with the latest equipment. I am becoming quite a good cook. Dafydd’s cleats and soccer balls are spilling out of his room into the living room. Marc has made the garage into a music studio and I use the small laundry room for my office.

Sometimes Marc complains about how long it is taking for each of us to establish careers that give us enough time and money to do anything other than work. I remind him that when we met ten years ago we looked at a ski vacation as something only very rich people with a lot of freedom could ever afford.

In March, Marc and Dafydd go off for spring break to Utah for a weeklong ski holiday. I decide to stay home, hold down the fort and use the time to begin studying yoga and meditation.

I hate the cold. Marc does not like meditative exercise. He hates silence. He tells me that he thinks my world is getting smaller while his is expanding to the four corners. After he and Dafydd return from their trip, I go on my first silent retreat. While I’m gone, he writes a score for a movie about a man who leaves his family to climb Mt. Everest. When I get back, he goes off to Brazil. I start work on a new book of poetry.

Beti worries about these separations. “It’s not normal,” she tells me, “for couples to be away from each other. You’ve already spent two months with him here, you there and vice versa. And now he’s going off to Brazil for a fortnight? Anything might happen.”

“What could happen?” I ask. “We’ve been neck to neck for so many years we look like the winged staff of Mercury.”

In June when Dafydd goes off to camp, I am scheduled to teach a monthlong workshop in Vermont. Marc plans to go to Brazil again.

We are in bed; he is on top of me. We kiss. “I’m sorry I’ve been so cranky. I’m tired, I guess,” he says. It feels like a half-assed attempt at an apology for the argument we’d had yesterday. “I hope time away from each other will give us some perspective,” he says. “I hate fighting with you.”

The argument started because I had stood in front of his piano while he was working, waiting till he looked up, and then asked him to listen to a poem I’d written in the middle of the night. He put his hand over his brow and rubbed his face, sighing deeply, clearly put
out by my having interrupted him. I ignore it and read him the poem. He looked up and said, “I don’t like it.” Looked at me square in the eyes. “Maybe it’s because I don’t understand it. Maybe I’ve never understood your poetry.”

“What?” I am so shocked, so hurt. I understand the true meaning of “taken aback” because I feel so pushed off balance, I nearly fall.

“Oh, Alys, I don’t know. I … I … I’m just tired of being your constant audience. You have editors who understand your every nuance. I don’t know enough about poetry. I’m not even sure I like words.”

I know anger is not the right response. It’s childish, but I am furious, thinking about how many of his rough scores I have listened to: “Allie, do you mind just coming in here and listening to this theme … ?” Like / know music? Like I can read music? The only thing I know how to play is the radio. But I have still listened to his work, critiqued it as best I can. I don’t understand why all of a sudden he seems so touchy about mine.

I explode out of his studio, through the yard to the kitchen. I make lunch and eat it, pouting and alone. By the time I finish, my anger has turned to disappointment. And by the time I’ve done the washing up, I realize I should never have interrupted him. His work time is as precious as mine. I apologize and so does he. But there has been damage done. I can feel it.

We speak several times while he is in Brazil, short conversations, slightly removed, about our work and letters we’ve each received from Dafydd. Brief exchanges of information. It’s awkward and sad. I think about how to make it right between us.

A month later, I pick him up at LAX. He looks tanned, his hazel eyes gleam. He looks down at his sneakers when he tells me, “It was a good time.”

“I missed you. I thought a lot about our life together, our family.” What I don’t tell him is how I have decided to have his baby. We have talked about it and not talked about it for ten years. He has always wanted a second child. Because of my deepest insecurity of losing a child in some unprecedented way, or of rocking my own sketchy equilibrium, I have been afraid. Now I am sure it is the one thing that will smooth things over. I am convinced it will make things right between us.

When I hug him, he is reticent, tight shoulders, stiff neck. I give him one of those quick nurturing massages lovers exchange without thought and kiss him lightly on the mouth. I whisper, “Let’s go home.”

Later, when we make love, I can feel him holding back. But I don’t and I realize I have forgotten to put in my diaphragm. A month later I take a home pregnancy test and it is positive.

Marc and I sit shoulder to shoulder just above the hard line of wet sand. Hannah has just had her sixth birthday. We are watching her in the sea, up to her knees. She shrieks as she falls face forward into the shallow shoreline of the waves.

“Do you think she’s ready for piano lessons?” I ask, leaning over to smooth suntan lotion on his back.