The first diorama of my own set was given to me by my dad a year later on my twentieth birthday. It’s the third scene and not one of the ones we found during our visit. It’s one of the more perfect pieces; only a small chip is missing from the second column of the pagoda.
I found a pair a year later on eBay after looking through at least ten thousand pieces that weren’t what I was looking for. And together, over the past two decades, we’ve found the other eight, along with three duplicates my dad keeps at his house. The last, the seventh in the set, has been elusive, and each day, my dad and I discuss where our search should travel next. I almost hope we never find it, that our quest never ends.
My eyes slit open, and the clock beside me blurs into focus. And though the world only barely glows with the promise of morning, I’ve used up my time for dreaming. I push to my feet, say good morning to the fifty-seven Chinese revelers, and move to the bathroom to get ready for the day.
C
onnor’s office is like mine, except he prefers color and I like silver and black. No clutter, sharp oranges, kiwi greens, and lots of glass.
I sink into a retro velvet wing chair and swivel on its chrome base to face him.
“Did you kiss and make up with Jeffrey?” he asks with a Cheshire grin.
“He’s reviewing the information Kelly gave him, and he’ll get back to us.”
His smile widens. “But did you kiss?”
Connor is the only one who knows about my marital misstep with Jeffrey, and he loves to bring it up, though I trust he’ll never tell.
I sneer at him, and his smile turns into a mocking frown. “So he’s not firing us?”
“Not yet.”
“Good, because these beauties come in an amazing gray suede.” He holds out his foot again for me to admire. My laugh is lost somewhere beneath the weight of the world, and when I don’t respond, Connor drops the banter, and in his lawyer voice, which is both serious and soothing, says, “What’s up?”
It takes several seconds for the words to find their way to my mouth, and when they do, they’re strangled. “I think I need a divorce.”
Last night, as I lay beside Gordon, his arm draped around my waist, my beautiful bracelet on the nightstand beside me, three things became clear. The first is I’m not crazy. The second is Gordon is crazy. The last is, and here’s the surprise, I realized that if I leave him during a calm, not during a storm, it might work.
There’s always a period after the violence when a precarious balance lingers between us, an aftermath of restraint, a time when we’re both trying to do better. If I’m good, if I don’t rock the boat, I might be able to take control.
This morning, when I got to work, I called the bank to get an accounting of our finances, and now, calmly, rationally, while things are stable, I’m going to find out the best way to go about getting a divorce.
Connor nods. “Okay, why?”
“Does there have to be a reason?”
“There doesn’t, but usually the ending of a nine-year marriage that’s resulted in two kids has some basis. Did he find out about Jeffrey?”
The words slap me with apoplectic terror at the thought of Gordon finding out about me being unfaithful.
Connor shakes his head at my reaction. “I’ll take that as a no. He doesn’t know about Jeffrey.”
I shake my head.
“But he knows about the divorce?”
This new thought is as horrifying as the first, exploding my synapses or neurons or whatever it is that connects in your brain to create logical thought.
He will kill me. He will kill me. He will kill me.
My throat constricts, throttling itself in anticipation of Gordon’s reaction.
What was I thinking?
That blurred state between sleep and awakeness can do that to you, enable you to believe things are better than they are, make you think you’re more capable.
As sure as I’m alive, I will be dead—it will be an accident, but it is certain.
“Jinks…”
I hold up my hand and swallow hard to regain my composure. “Connor, forget it. Never mind. I don’t know what I was thinking. Forget I ever came in here.”
His face is as serious as I’ve ever seen it. So serious, he almost looks straight.
“What’s going on?”
I shake my head and manage to stand.
“Talk to me,” he says.
“I can’t.”
I
leave the building and drive ten miles to the beach. Work is piled on my desk, and I have a zillion things to get done, but I can’t focus and I can’t breathe and I need a time-out.
The wind gusts like dragon’s breath swirling the sand and the sea. While overhead, gulls and pelicans float on the breeze as though inflated with helium, the air pregnant and billowing with the promise of spring.
A pair of lovers sits on a blanket to the right, so I walk to the left, sink to the ground, and dig my toes into the sand to find the coolness below.
My head and heart throb.
I’m a fool. I’m a coward. I hate myself for what I’ve become, and I’m so afraid.
How have I let it get to this point? Why have I stayed so long?
Fear.
Yes, but the fear, real fear, came later. I stayed even before I was too scared to leave.
The truth makes me want to rip at my skin with self-hatred, the reasons I’ve stayed so asinine that I’m loath to confess them even to myself.
Pride, obstinacy, vanity, arrogance.
A pelican dives from the sky, changing course a moment before impact to skim gracefully across the water, then rises again for the sky.
The phantasm I’ve created of my life is a masterpiece of deceit, easy to believe because most of the time it’s real. I look at the bracelet on my wrist—love. I feel the bruise beneath my shirt pulse with my breath—insanity. One flaunted, the other concealed.
I rest my head on my knees and stare at the grains of sand between my feet, each completely different from the next, but completely unremarkable.
A squealing giggle causes me to lift my head. A mother chases a toddler toward the water. The mom grabs the girl’s hand and together they flee with a shriek from the wash running up the beach. The girl looks something like Addie, same light skin and bird-boned body. The girl hesitates at the edge—she’s not like Addie. The mother pulls her back toward the froth laughing. And I’m not like the mother. It’s so effortless for her. Over and over she runs with her daughter from the water, completely content with the tediousness of the game.
I couldn’t do that. I don’t want to do that. Gordon’s the one who plays, runs, romps with the kids. He loves doing dad things—volunteering in the classroom, helping with projects, coaching. He’s better at packing their lunches, organizing their activities, wiping their noses.
I love my kids, but I get easily bored doing kid things and mom things. It’s horrible to admit, but my favorite moments of motherhood are when they’re asleep, when I can stare at them and cherish them without having to tend to them or pretend I’m enjoying myself. When they’re not demanding and I’m not failing. Of course, I allege the opposite, lament how I wish I could spend more time with them and rave about our wonderful weekends and how quickly they flew by. While, inside, I’m so relieved to be at work I’m almost giddy. But here, with only the seagulls and the sand, I don’t pretend to be anything but what I am—and I am not like the mother in front of me; this ugly, shameful truth is in part why I’ve stayed. I don’t want to have to be like her, to go it alone, be a single parent, not be able to escape.
I always assumed motherhood was something that descended naturally as soon as you had a child. Then after Drew was born, I thought it came with time. Now, I’ve given up. I don’t know how other moms instinctively know what their children need and how to care for them. I don’t know how to relate to my kids, how to play pretend, how to live in their world or roll around in the mud. I didn’t get excited when Drew went potty for the first time or Addie said her first word. I’m happy for them, but these are their accomplishments—milestones I take for granted they will have. After all, eventually don’t we all learn to walk, talk, and poop in the toilet? I don’t take any more credit for those achievements than I do for Addie’s curly red hair or Drew’s blue eyes.
I’m not a good mother.
I try. I do the requisite duties—I make sure they’re fed, clean, and well provided for. I take pride in my role as a provider, that I make a good living that pays for a nice life for them, but this is not a sacrifice. I work because I like what I do and because I’d go insane with the banality of motherhood if I didn’t.
The little girl says, “Again, again.”
“Mommy’s done,” the mother says.
The little girl grabs the woman’s hand and pulls her toward the water. The mother reluctantly relents and runs toward the perilous edge for the thousandth time, and for the thousandth time, squeals with pretend panic as they run from the froth.
Mothers sacrifice for their children, throw themselves in front of trains, lift cars with superhuman strength to save them.
I do nothing. Drew has glimpsed Gordon’s temper. He was there when Gordon nearly killed me. He’s been subjected to Gordon’s demand for perfection, has suffered the consequences of not living up to his impossible standards.
He knows his dad has hurt me. He’s heard the slaps and the thumps at night, has been woken by my involuntary gasps and yelps, has heard the sharp intake of my breath when he hugs me too hard the next day.
Yet I stay.
My mind drifts to the first time Drew and I were alone. It was the day after he was born, and he was cradled in the rook’s nest of my arm, his tiny lips opened and closed, glubbing around his toothless gums, and his newborn eyes, barely slits, opened around their pale blue centers to find mine.
“Hello, little man,” I said.
At my voice, his mouth rooted for my breast. He knew me.
Although he’d just fed, I opened my gown, and he latched on again, a lackluster effort more for comfort than nutrient. That moment lives in my heart, the moment he was all mine, when life was still perfect and I could give him everything he needed.
Now, when he needs me most, I’m failing.
My cell phone buzzes. It’s probably Tina wondering where I am. I ignore it.
I need to protect them. I just don’t know how. I can’t keep Gordon from hurting them any more than I can keep him from hurting me.
I need to leave, but I stay.
Scared, yes. Lazy, maybe. Weak, definitely. Exhausted, always.
When the mother and daughter pack up, so do I. Attending to the calamity of my life will have to wait, because today, like yesterday, and a thousand yesterdays before that, there’s too much to be done.
As I walk to my car, I play the message that was left on my phone. It’s Gordon. Addie’s having some friends over so I need to pick up Drew from after-school club on my way home from work.
M
y detour to the beach created a backlog of work, and the afternoon whirls by in a hailstorm of catch-up. Four hours later, when I leave the office, the sun’s already begun its descent and I’m still texting, phoning, and dictating as I walk to my car.
My daily odyssey is so familiar I barely notice it as I drive on the endless freeway that leads hordes of cars like ants toward their destinies, the landscape around me a redundant scene of industrial buildings, apartments, box stores, minimarts, and car dealerships.
When the last fire of the day is stomped out, I speed-dial my dad.
We rehash Drew’s baseball game, then I tell him about work. He grunts his approval at Sherman finally acquiescing to the merger and his disapproval at the man’s decision to hurt his sons as his final act.
His laugh, one of the few things not compromised by the stroke, fills my heart as I recite the joke on the birthday card Connor gave me.
My blinker signals my exit, and I merge onto Laguna Canyon Road to travel through the preserved strip of wilderness that leads to the Pacific. Twisting native oaks, sycamores, and coastal sage paint the canyon green and gold, and splashes of wild mustard and artichoke thistle add spots of yellow and purple. This is my favorite part of the journey.
“I might have found it,” my dad says. The consonants aren’t there, but I fill them in. In the past year, I’ve learned to interpret my dad’s speech like a translator, and the language is no longer foreign.
My excitement grows with my dad’s as he tells me about the granddaughter of Lucille Montagne, a woman who bought a set of the Chinese dioramas around the same time Frank Lloyd Wright bought his.
“The granddaughter’s been out of the country, but she’s sure her grandmother still had them when she died.”
“So where are they now?”
“She thinks in storage.”
“And she has the one we’re looking for?”
“She’s not sure, but maybe. Her grandmother had four of them. I described the one we’re looking for, and she asked if it looked like the woman was falling down the steps.”
“That’s it! That’s the one.”
His smile resonates through the phone.
I turn onto the twisty-turny street that leads to our neighborhood. The ocean sprawls behind me. On my right, houses burrow into the hills. Below, on the left, is the wedge of golden canyon I drove through minutes before.
“When will she know?”
“She said she’d check next week.”
“Where does she live?”
“The Bay area.”
I pull onto the road that will take me to my home.
“I wanted to get it before your birthday.”
“Close enough.”
The search for my gift has occupied my dad since his stroke. It’s been a godsend, his days filled with the quest and forcing him to recover. Each day, for hours, he struggles through web searches and pecks out e-mails with his one good hand, all to find our missing piece.
“I think I’ll call again tomorrow. Maybe she can go earlier so we can celebrate tomorrow night at dinner.”
My heart swells as it always does when I talk with my dad. No one will ever love me the way he does.
I pull into our driveway, and the garage door slides up so I can pull my Land Rover in beside Gordon’s Cayenne.