Parts Unknown (11 page)

~ ~ ~

I spent so much time in that living room, its decor didn’t register anymore. But I had fallen in love with George in that living room. More accurately, I’d fallen in love with him thanks to the map on the living room wall, above the faux fireplace.

It had been weeks before George brought me to his apartment. He courted me in the way a proper gentleman would, which involved dinners at increasingly expensive restaurants, a few foreign-language films, and lengthy smooching sessions in the car, which was truly “necking,” as he never ventured below my collarbone. I was becoming increasingly torn. I loved the fancy meals, and I liked having plans for a change on Saturday nights. But he was so
old
and
proper
. And I felt like such a half-assed mess next to his precision and planning. He planned each date. He paid for each date.

I came along, like a well-trained artist poodle, and did my tricks. He liked for me to look pretty, so I carefully attired myself in my most attractive flea-market finds and even attempted mascara. He liked it when I talked about my art, and especially about creativity, which despite his assertions to the contrary, he hadn’t mastered in the way I had. In fact, that was the one thing I had that he didn’t, and he wanted to figure out how I worked. To take me apart like an expensive clock mechanism to see how the gears fit together. I’d tell him about my ideas, my all-night painting sessions when there was something I absolutely had to paint, and how I couldn’t stop, I needed to paint as fast as I could, before the vision before me faded away in the mist, a ghost. He stared intently, his fingers twitching, and I could tell he was dying to write this down, to take notes.

Finally, there was the night of the most expensive meal yet—a several-hundred-dollar extravaganza at Campanile Restaurant on La Brea, suspiciously celebrating no occasion at all. I knew that no meal comes free, and I felt the heavy weight of his expectations settle not unpleasantly over me, like a warm blanket. He drove me to his place for a “nightcap.” We were both tipsy from sharing a bottle of wine, and giddy in the way that spending hundreds of dollars on food that would soon be digested and forgotten makes you.

His living room’s utter neatness struck me like a blow. Rooming with Kip, my status quo was filth. Dirty dishes cluttering any available surface, frayed Jockey underwear in unexpected locations, free weights in the middle of the floor that I’d always trip over. But in George’s apartment, the books were sorted by color, and the sofa was at an exact right angle from the recliner, and directly proportional to the coffee table. Truly, a grown-up lived here.

Not only that, but the room was full of exotic, brightly colored flowers on long stems, strappy leaves beneath. Orchids. “They’re beautiful,” I murmured, almost but not quite touching one. They were so thick, glossy, and waxy, they didn’t quite seem real.

“I’ve spent years building up this collection,” he explained. “No run-of-the-mill phaleanopsis for me. This one’s a
pleurothallis plectinata
. And this variety,” he gave me a sly look, “Is called
Sweetheart
. I’ve got cattleyas, epidendrums. Some paphiopedilums. It can get to be an expensive habit.”

“They must be hard to take care of,” I ventured.

“I know just what they need. I keep a close eye on them; I’m quite invested in their upkeep. I go to orchid shows, several times a year—here.” He selected a brown leather scrapbook from a nearby bookcase, and proudly showed me a variety of award ribbons, stuck carefully to the pages with double-sided tape. “Very nice,” I murmured. Really, I needed to leave. This was getting kind of creepy. What was I thinking, taking up with a practically middle-aged man who not only saved meeting minutes of the Orchid Society of Southern California but mounted them in an album? He had won an honorable mention at the Southland Orchid Show and was keeping the silly little ribbon for eternity, for crying out loud.

My eyes darted around as I tried to think up an excuse for a quick escape. The furniture all matched, and even more impressive, it was in colors that easily stained—taupe, cream, beige. I saw no stains. I scanned his walls. No artwork, either. This was a disaster. Maybe I could fake some gastric emergency. But then I saw an intriguing-looking old map above that fake fireplace.

“It’s one of the most expensive items I’ve ever bought,” George commented as I stepped up close to the glass-encased marvel. “But I had to have it. I like owning beautiful things.”

His voice, mist-like, barely prickled my consciousness—I couldn’t stop looking at that map. I guess, if I was going to stick around, I should have been making some sultry, sexual moves by that point, but I kept staring. An inset in the frame dated the map from 1719. It was a map of North America as envisioned by the intrepid explorers and cartographers of the day, with painstaking renderings of indigenous peoples along the side. The continent’s shape was about right, but some key details were completely bollixed up. There were only three Great Lakes, and what was now Florida broke off abruptly at the Gulf of Mexico, with some invented North Sea underneath. The Western Ocean to the east became the Sea of the British Empire along the East coast. North America was divided into long-disbanded territories—Louisiana, New France, New Mexico. But the best part was California—it was an island! There it was, cut off from the rest of the country by a mythical Red Sea, off in a little alternate universe of its own.

Most of the western half of North America was labeled Parts Unknown. Just a big blank space on the map, a few mountain ranges and Indian tribes sketched in, with no borders at all on that side. Anything north of the Californian island was completely unexplored. What wonders a person could find there, sandwiched between those imaginary seas. A lost city of gold, perhaps. The sunken Atlantis.

Oh, to be on that island of California, wandering northward toward Parts Unknown, nothing but a knapsack on my back and all the possibilities in the world before me. George must know. He must understand—his precise diction masking his raw, wild heart. He and I were kindred spirits, after all, the map revealing our true selves in the way words couldn’t.

I turned, at last, and grasped him in my arms.

~ ~ ~

 “G’night, George.” I kissed him lightly when I was done with the catalog.

“Love you, dear.”

“I love you, too.”

Undressing in the bedroom, I could hear him moving around in the hall, the shushing sound as he lifted the cordless phone from its cradle. The fuzz of his voice from the far end of the den—his nightly call home. “Hello, Mother. How was your day?” By the time I was tucked in bed, teeth brushed, pillows arranged around me, he was still talking. Soft murmurs, solicitous acknowledgements.

I sat down on George’s bed and brushed my hair. I always thought of it as George’s bed, because it was the sort of furniture I’d never choose to buy. It was made of big, heavy, dark pieces of wood, hand-carved with intricate patterns—tree trunks, leaves, small elvin things that looked like satyrs here and there, peeking out from behind baroquely curling flower stems. It was an antique and had been imported from Bavaria. I didn’t like to look too closely at the designs. I was never sure what I might find.

Nevertheless, I loved that bed. I could float in its crisp sheets endlessly, free of worry. In fact, I spent more time there than I should, but I had time to spare—all the time I used to fill with painting. I didn’t paint anymore, and I hadn’t for a long time. I missed it sometimes, like a lost but insignificant body part: tonsils; appendix. You don’t really need them, and it’s surprising how well you could live without them. It just seemed like too much effort, to exhume all the supplies from the boxes in the garage where they were stored. And what would I paint? I hadn’t a clue.

The truth was: I didn’t feel like I
deserved
to paint. I hadn’t done anything for years that would let me reward myself in that way. Better to stop. Better not to think about it.

I had continued painting for a while, after I’d met George. He liked to show me off at faculty get-togethers. “This is my girlfriend, the artist,” he’d say proudly, his arm possessively around my waist. And mustached colleagues would eye him with a new respect. I could almost hear them thinking,
I didn’t know he had it in him
. Sure, he’d pursued me when he’d found I was an artist, but once I became pregnant with Lucy, I turned into someone else—the vessel carrying his future heir, the one remnant of the Anglin line. And honestly, that fuzzy, sexual, intangible “artistic mystique” that so drew him to me—well, I didn’t have it anymore. When Lucy was born, everything had stopped. Several years of exhaustion, night wakings, tantrum after tantrum. I loved Lucy more than I’d ever imagined I could love someone, but she left me drained, empty.

I was capable of nothing but letting the days go by, one after the other in an endless stream. Lately, when she was in preschool in the morning, I’d often go to our bedroom and lie down, feeling the sun slant through the window just so, warming my whole body. I’d lie there like a cat, soaking in the rays, feeling boneless and without thought. I could just be there. Just exist. Without thinking, without feeling, without having to
do
anything.

And George didn’t mind, soon enough, that I’d stopped painting. He never did get it figured out, no matter how much I tried to explain where I got my ideas, how I knew which paints to use; why the #4 bristle brush was my favorite, why I never used the sable one, even though I had bought it specially. “The bristle brush just
feels
right,” I’d tell him, and I’d see him make a mental note, then erase it, because you couldn’t quantify that. You couldn’t quantify a feeling.

I glopped some peppermint foot lotion into my hand and rubbed it on my tired feet. They were long, pale, veiny—not my best feature. With surprise, I noticed deeper blue veins coming up from the soles—they looked just like my mother’s. How could that have happened, when I wasn’t looking? My body betraying me like that. Turning me into someone else.

The days went on. They weren’t boring, because Lucy’s frequent tantrums provided variety. Trying to get through the preschool drop-off and pickup while avoiding all those other put-together parents was exhausting in itself. Thank god for my friend Astrid, my one beacon of messiness in the tidy world of playdates and volunteer opportunities.

But in the end, my days were unchangeable: as impossible to affect as the weather, but without nearly as much variety. And I could see them all stretching ahead of me, years and years of those same days. You could try to halt the rain by going outside without an umbrella, but that wouldn’t do a thing. You’d just get wet. I mean, forget that “change comes from within” crap. Where? From where? The universe was inviolate. Perhaps each day of my life had been preordained since my birth. Somehow that August in 1998 had slipped through the cracks, but you couldn’t expect such a cosmic error to happen again.

Lucy would grow older, and there would be different schools, and different challenges to deal with. But that didn’t really change anything. Because I could go on like this, indefinitely. Just like Madame, her week revolving around Sunday dinner. Just like Mom, spraying Endust on the hall table every day. Vacuuming the rug, over and over.

That could be me.

Chapter 6

I carried Lucy up the stairs after preschool the next afternoon. She was pretending both her legs were broken and was refusing to walk on her own. That morning, I’d had to carry her to the car, from the car to class, and now back from the car and up the stairs. It wasn’t easy, either—the kid was pushing forty pounds. “Are your legs still broken?” I asked her.

“Yeah, they’re still broke. The doctor says they’ll all be better tomorrow though!” Lucy reassured me.

“I sure hope so,” I muttered, depositing her unceremoniously into the entryway as I gathered up the mail. Our mail slot decanted straight onto the hallway floor, and I gathered the Vons and CVS circulars strewn everywhere.

Meanwhile, Lucy was lying on her back, her arms and legs in the air, like some dead insect. She was fake-moaning, drool dribbling out of the side of her mouth. I burst out laughing and scooped her up. “You look ridiculous!” I teased her. “Aren’t your legs feeling a little better yet?”

“I told you, not till tomorrow!” Then Lucy got a crafty look in her eye. “Did you say you got Creamsicles?”

“Yep.”

“Well, if you got Creamsicles then maybe they might make my leg better.”

“What flavor is the best for broken legs?” I asked seriously. “Orange or raspberry?”

“Orange is best,” Lucy confirmed, and as she sucked on one, she made her legs jerk crazily, then started crawling around like a baby, Creamsicle hanging from her mouth and dripping on the floor, howling “Goo goo! Ga ga!” She turned to me conspiratorially. “Creamsicle worked, Mommy, but then it turned me into a baby!” I retorted, “When you wake up from your nap, you better be a kid again who can walk, or else there’s no TV later. Got it?”

“Ga ga,” said Lucy.

The phone rang as I carried Lucy to her room; it turned out to be Mom, who called several times a week these days. Ever since Lucy’d been born, my parents, shockingly, were phoning
me
.

 “Hi Mom, what’s going on over there?”

“Oh, the usual. I’m on the board for a benefit for History Park. It’s just so much work, I’m not sure I’ll be able to get everything done in time.”

“Of course you will,” I reassured her. “You always do.” I imagined her with a huge list, in seventh heaven—so many things to check off.

“How’s Dad doing?” I asked.

“It’s funny, since he retired I’d have thought I’d see more of him, not less. But the man has become obsessed with golf.” She laughed. “Even more than he was, if you can believe it. Today he had an early tee time, so you won’t be able talk with him, I’m afraid. But that’s okay. I’ve got so much to do, it’s a blessing in disguise, not having him under my feet all the time.”