Okay,
I typed
,
poised my finger over the Send key for a few seconds, then pressed it.
I shouldn’t have written that. Where’s unsend? Is there an unsend on Instant Messages? This man can’t just walk out of my life then reappear whenever it’s convenient for him. There is no way I should share this intensely personal trip with a dog like Mike Dougherty. This rat bastard is probably going to write a column about all the hippie chicks he “banged” in Missoula. Why do I waste my energy on a guy like Mike when I am so close to the happily-ever-after ending with Adam?
When do we take off?
he asked.
* * *
I made reservations for a visit in mid-May, leaving Missoula before its bicentennial celebration. I wanted to see Missoula in its normal state, not with tourists dressed in nineteenth-century outfits, coonskin hats, and Indian headdresses. It would be like someone from New Orleans making a homecoming during Mardi Gras. I wanted to see Missoula the way I remembered it, if that could be done from a suite at the Sacagawea Inn.
When I called Francesca a few days later, she cried as soon as I told her it was me. I’d planned on reminding her of how she knew me, though now the notion seems quite absurd. “I knew you’d find me,” she sobbed at the sound of my voice. Until she said that, I’d never considered asking why she hadn’t been in touch with me after all these years. Surely she knew Grammy’s address and phone number. Our first conversation in fifteen years didn’t seem like the right time to ask, though. “Tell me about your life, Mona,” Francesca asked as I grew terrified at my nonexistent list of accomplishments. I knew she expected me to tell her I’d served in the Peace Corps or started a school for homeless quadriplegics. I regretted calling her. I regretted telling her that I would come to visit her. I loved her, of course. So much so that I couldn’t stand the inevitable look of disappointment she’d have when learning I hadn’t left so much as a door ding on the world, much less a dent. I was terrified to see Francesca because, though I had never really grasped this before, the unspoken truth for both of us is that we were supposed to do the good work that others never could.
Why do women ask what guys’ facial expressions mean? They don’t mean anything. Women. First they complain they don’t see enough of us, then when they do see us, they’re hell bent on making you wish you were somewhere else.
—The Dog House, June
Weeks passed with no earth-shaking, life-altering events. I started my singing lessons with Ollie, trained for my first boxing match, which was scheduled against another rookie bantam weight, and watched Vicki buzz around the house with fabric swatches, flooring samples, and lighting catalogs. I consulted with her on my stylistic preferences, but it was kind of like watching someone plan a surprise party for me. She was so completely lost in the planning, there were times when she didn’t hear me come into the house. I watched her strut around the house with her telephone headset on chatting with Fredrique, a designer she collaborated with. Listening to her talk on the phone, it was clear Vicki was angling to be Fredrique’s next protégé. I could only hear Vicki’s reaction to the designer’s feedback, but it seemed she’d won Fredrique’s respect and was well on the way to being taken under her well-plumed wing.
I had a series of flat-lining dates with Adam. I couldn’t understand why I was still dating him, but every time he asked to see me again, I feigned excitement and accepted the invitation. Greta’s analysis was that I was afraid to let go of what I thought I wanted because I’m not quite sure what I do want. My take on it was a bit simpler. Our roles had reversed completely. Last year, he had little cognizance of my existence. I was an appendage to Grammy, a client from his father’s handful of wealthy clients. Even professionally, I wasn’t of much interest to Adam because he wanted to take the firm in the direction of serving growing businesses. Technology at that. How fascinated could he have been by our filings? Now all that changed. He was the one who seemed smitten, thrilled to be with me. Some nights he gazed into my eyes with that look of forever that I worked so hard to get from him, and it terrified me. Partly because I knew he was falling in love with a woman who likes Ozzfest and would reportedly “kill for playoff tickets.” Another part knew that sooner or later, Adam would want to take our relationship to the next level and I was not entirely sure I’d have the ability to say no to whatever he offered. Having been powerless for my entire life has had its benefits. I’ve never had to break anyone’s heart. I’ve never had to reject offers. I couldn’t bear to be the one to bring down the ax on Adam because Adam was me. Sure, he wasn’t staging public relations events for my benefit—unless he thought getting a speeding ticket last weekend would impress me but he clearly wanted the relationship to blossom. I couldn’t kill it with a clear conscience. I read a novel once where a woman found a new wife for her husband, so she could leave him for another man without feeling too guilty about it. Maybe that’s what I’d do—find someone new for Adam. Nah.
Of course, I realize this sounds terribly self-important. Men have been dumped before and they seem to recover just fine. Generally they bounce back within hours. Minutes if they live within walking distance to a babe-packed bar. I realize that this was—as Greta would say—more about me than Adam. Still, knowing this didn’t help me overcome the paralysis that kept me in this stagnant, stale, and thoroughly boring relationship.
A lesser part of me knew that I was keeping Adam around because it was nice to have someone who adored me. Mike and I flirted, but I knew what would happen if we started dating. It would be wonderfully exciting for about two weeks before Mike emotionally mounted my head on his wall like a chick-hunting trophy, and moved on to the next woman. I read all about this type of guy in an early draft of Greta’s new book,
Hey, You’re My Ex in Different Pants!
When I met Mike at the airport, I wondered if he wasn’t the dog be tried to be. Dressed in a tie dyed T-shirt and well-worn jeans, he held a backpack and a suede jacket in one hand, looking like he was trying to fit in with Missoula. “Hey brother, peace and love and all that jazz.” I leaned in to kiss his cheek. In a moment, I felt he was my best friend.
“Do I look dumb?” he asked as we looked for seats in the waiting area at the gate.
“Sweetie, you
are
dumb.” I smiled. “But you couldn’t tell from looking at you. You look good.” I took a chance. “You look cute.”
When we started to descend into Missoula, I felt like my insides were plastics in an oven. Everything melted, shriveling, stinking of fear as I remembered the last time I saw this landscape. It was different, though. More roads. More cars buzzing around on them. More buildings and homes, but it was still Montana. The mountains jagged toward the sky looking fierce, almost like they could tear you to pieces unlike the soft dry hills of San Diego.
“Are you ready for this, Mona Lisa?” Mike asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, wishing I could come up with something more insightful to say. But I didn’t know. And insight was nowhere in sight.
Driving to Francesca’s retirement community, I welled at the sight of the plush maples, oaks, pines, and cottonwood trees. These were the things that stayed the same, the characteristics that marked the area through time. It was like looking at a friend’s baby pictures and recognizing her features. When I see Greta’s photos with Santa Claus, I always think,
I know that little nose, I see those little eyes. I can see her in there.
I can see my Missoula here, but it had grown. Reserve Street widened like a middle-aged gut. Costco, Home Depot and Wal-Mart covered the earth I rolled a wheelbarrow over on the way to the Farmer’s Market on weekends.
Hippie students from the university shuffled the streets, earnestly talking about politics from left to lefter. Boys in dreadlocks played Hacky Sack while girlfriends with babies in slings sat on wool blankets on the grass. I sighed with relief at the sight of a park with more guitars and kites than shoes. Some things never change. The Loose Caboose coffee shop modeled after a railroad train hadn’t been swallowed by Starbucks (which I later learned was relegated to the back of the Missoula Barnes & Noble).
For me, though, all Hacky Sacks dropped to the ground, all kites plummeted, and the Loose Caboose came to a screeching halt when I saw that the peace sign had been removed from Waterworks Hill. Much like what the sign represented, the symbol was constantly being torn down, then mysteriously reappeared a few days later. The city council thought peace looked ugly on the side of the mountain. The hippies thought it looked good anywhere. But Francesca later told us that the peace sign hadn’t been on the hill for years now.
Francesca was waiting at the entrance to Hunter’s Glen in a crocheted orange and brown poncho resting over her like a tablecloth. The centerpiece was long white hair tamed into a low ponytail. I wasn’t prepared for how frail Francesca would appear at first sight, though the effects of her knobby elbows and flaking cheeks diminished once she opened her mouth and released a hearty shout of pure joy. “Baby girl, my baby girl!” Her arms reached to the sky like Moses parting the Red Sea. She held my face in her hands and kissed my forehead, my chin, my cheeks, and my lips. “Let me look at my baby girl,” she said, examining my face. If she were a lipstick-wearing grandmother, there wouldn’t have been much face left for her to look at, but as it was, Francesca lightly glazed me with a mint-smelling lip balm. “I knew you’d find me someday.” She grasped my hands. “Let’s go upstairs to my apartment. You must be Mike.” She extended her leaf of a hand to him.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Francesca. Mona’s told me a lot of great stories about when you lived together.”
Oh my God. He sounds nervous.
Francesca sighed sadly, then motioned us toward her apartment with her hand. She walked slowly, like the captain, lifting her feet off the floor only slightly. Elder-skating. “We had beautiful times at the house. It was paradise,” she said, shaking her head at the unsaid.
For the entire week Mike and I were in Missoula, we spent most of our time with Francesca, who still drove. I nearly cried with joy when I saw she still had the VW minibus complete with our paintings along the sides. The odometer read just over 189,000 miles, but it may have broken like much of the rest of the bus. I gravitated toward the rainbow and hearts section that Jessica and I made by dotting paint with Q-Tips. I could see Jessica with her flowing, tangled red hair and face of freckles standing beside me asking who even drove these goofy vans anymore. “This was our shuttle bus,” Francesca told Mike. “Small groups, trips to the cinema and such,” she trailed.
“We never went to the movies!” I protested.
“Oh, you break my heart with your forgetfulness,” Francesca said. “We only saw
It’s a Wonderful Life
together four thousand times at the cinema. Why do you think your mother embroidered that moon on your ceiling sheet?”
Moon? I thought it was a sun
. “You were constantly talking about lassoing the moon. Such a sweet child. You said you loved us so much you’d lasso the moon.” She turned to Mike, “Very high-drama child, you know? Anyway, that was the only film that played at the cinema for the first year we lived here. God knows why they picked that movie. Probably all they could get out here back then, but every weekend, come hell or high water, Mona would pile into the bus and join whoever was going to the movies.”
I knew what was on the back of the minibus so I avoided looking at it for the first three days of our visit, but finally I couldn’t resist a peek. I sat on the gravel of her driveway and faced what we never realized would wind up a graveyard of handprints. After we’d all decorated the bus, everyone dipped his or her bands in a bucket of green paint and left a print on the back of the minibus. “Which one is yours?” Mike asked me as he sat beside me. I answered by holding my hand over my slightly smaller green hand. “This was my best friend Jessica’s.” I glided over hers. “There was this boy who was going to—” I couldn’t finish. My face was striped with mascara and I wiped my nose on my sleeve. After a few minutes, I tried to remember which handprints belonged to my parents, my tiny brothers Oscar and David, Francesca, Freddy, Jacqueline, Asia, Morgan, Scott, Lana, Leah, Maya, Karah, Lilac, and Teddy.
The crunching on gravel announced Francesca’s arrival. “You have no idea how hard I had to work to get this bus, Mona. I don’t drive it very much so I’ll never see it go out on me.” She stood beside Mike and I, contemplating sitting on the gravel. “You’ll help an old lady get back up again, won’t you, Mr. Manly Man?” she teased Mike.
By the second hour of our visit, Francesca and Mike had roots and history together. She told him she’d read his columns and he didn’t fool her for a minute. “You’re a very lost young man, hiding behind a lot of bravado, you know that?”
“That pretty much sums it up,” he conceded with a shrug of laughter.
Francesca spread her skirt across the gravel and continued her story about the VW minibus. “It was registered in your father’s name, but he left everything to you and, well, to you. You were a minor, so you couldn’t drive the thing so I had to buy it from your grandmother, who did not make things easy for me. Anyway, after nine months, she finally transferred the title to my name, but not without a lot of hassles. She was so angry at your father because of the accident. And she was angry at me. But I loved that bus with all of the kids’ scribble paintings and handprints. That bus is my Vietnam wall.”
“Why was she angry at you?” I asked Francesca. “Why was she mad at Daddy?” The word Daddy hadn’t passed my lips since the day of the accident “Give ‘em hell, Daddy,” I said, almost mocking their futile anti-nukes effort. He gave me a thumbs-up and told me he loved me before closing the door to the school bus. I had used the word “father,” referring to someone else’s. I’d even used “dad,” though always prefaced by “your.” “Daddy” hadn’t been spoken in so many years, I half expected the word to get stuck like an old machine being turned on for the first time in years. Or an old faucet shooting out rusty water.