Shelter in Place (9 page)

I
found a job pouring drinks at The Owl, a college bar down by the water. One of their guys had quit the day before I walked in, and they hired me on the spot. Three prime shifts a week—Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights plus lunch on Wednesday.

What fortune I had in White Pine.

I was able to help with the rent, with the expenses, but there wasn't much left after that. Until the house sold, my father didn't have any money. And even afterwards, with the loss he took, and all the debt he carried, and my mother's income gone, things were tough.

Anyway, like that, I had a routine. Sunday through Tuesday nothing to do but work on the house, and go out to the prison. The rest of the time, I poured drinks.

All of it happened so easily. Moving. Finding work. I don't know why it always took me so long to fully understand that my life had changed.

One night in those early days, I came home from the bar, pulled the truck up to the house, turned off the lights and killed the engine. It was as if I'd never done anything else, or lived any other way.

Now I live here with my father. I am a bartender and my mother is in prison.

That was that. Nothing would ever change again. Now
this
world was immoveable, irrevocable. There was no future. I didn't know what else to do, but go to work, and wonder about Tess, and eat pizza with my dad out at Lester's and make believe we were protecting my mother.

Once I'd handled all the establishing details, those minor challenges—settling into a room, finding work, learning the streets—what then? All my life, there had been so much movement—one grade to another grade, one milestone after another milestone, and then the road north, and Tess and all our plans, and the two of us looking forward to a vague and expanding life composed entirely of romantic images. In that future we were always moving forward, passing through pretty villages, sunlight in our beer glasses, making love on beaches, racing in quiet trains through one countryside after another. In those days, nothing stopped, not the present, not the future. There would be no end to movement. Everything in our life aside from love would be external.

And then there in my silent truck out in the early morning dark, I believed I was watching all of it come to a stop.

How could I ask Tess to live in that town, under those conditions? Why would she want to come and live with two sad men in a prison town? What would she want of our fractured family? So again I convinced myself that the kindest thing, the best way to love her was to leave her alone. And so I did.

I
went to the prison with my father as often as I could and it was nearly always the same. It felt more like prayer than anything else. She didn't say much more than our names. Just smiled and stroked the tops of our hands with her thumbs. At first I was relieved by the absence of speech, but slowly it began to frustrate me. So on a Monday morning, I went alone. My father didn't argue, though I saw he was worried by it. He didn't like the idea of breaking routine, of giving up our new ritual.

I went anyway. Drove the Spine. Descended into the valley and parked my truck in the lot. I sat at the table, and waited for her. Soon they brought her out.

“You've come alone to visit the big bad witch of the west.”

I nodded.

“Joey. Always the brave one weren't you.”

“No,” I said.

“Where's Dad?”

“Home.”

The theater had ended. I saw it go out of her face. I watched her as if I were watching myself. And then I was certain we shared the tar.

“Are you all right in here?”

“Of course,” she said.

“I'm not sure it's so obvious. You realize where you are, right? It's not some resort.”

She removed her hand from mine, but was otherwise very still. She held my eyes, until I looked away.

“I do, Joseph, know where I am. Yes.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

Her capacity for sudden cold formality had always frightened me as a child. The flipped switch when I was sarcastic with her, or whined, or, worst of all, had been cruel to someone weak.

Here it became something else, something worse. Trailing behind that anger, that quick shift, was now a history of violence. I could not ignore what she was capable of. I could not prevent myself from seeing her hammer.

“I'm sorry,” I said again. “I just want to make sure you're all right. That they're treating you well.”

“You said it yourself. Not a resort.”

“No,” I said.

“No.”

“Mom. I'm here. Not for a little while. I'm here. I live here. I have a job.”

“Why's that, Joey? Why would you do that? You can go anywhere in the world. Why would you stay here?”

I looked at her carefully. I was searching for something beyond the language.

“Why am I here?”

She leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Yes. Tell me,” she said.

“For you. The same reason Dad is here.”

“But your father is my husband.”

“Yes. I understand that.”

I knew she didn't like the sarcasm, but I couldn't help myself. It seemed my only defense. I was angry. I was terrified. I was young.

“Well, then, you also understand he has responsibilities that you do not.”

I matched her posture. I wondered whether it was true. Whether my father had a responsibility to be here. Whether any of us did.

“For better or for worse. Death do us part, Joseph. Mine or his.”

I'd begun to feel sick.

“You, on the other hand, may do as you like. Go where you wish. Look at your sister. Claire remains unchanged, it seems. So, what good is it for you to be here?”

“Dad says we can protect you.”

She laughed and leaned forward and reached for my hands. “Listen, you have to go on, Joey.”

Her skin was cool and dry.

Toward the future, I thought.

She gave a weak smile, and nodded. “Yes, Joey Boy. Yes.”

The time was up then. The guards came for her. She hugged me and disappeared behind the closing door.

I met my dad at Lester's. He was at our booth with a pitcher and two glasses, back to the wall, rubbing his beard with one hand, caught in some thought, some worry.

“How'd it go?” He glanced up at me as he poured my beer.

I shook my head.

“She doesn't talk much,” he said.

“She talked.”

He looked hopeful. “Yeah? What'd she say?”

“She told me I could do anything I wanted with my life. She wanted to know what I was doing here, why I'd ever want to live in White Pine. She said you're different. You're her husband. ‘Death do us part,' she said. ‘For better or for worse.'”

He looked at me hard. And then nodded, conceding the point. “Yeah. Well, that's true. It really isn't the same. She's right, Joey. You know, you
don't
need to be here. Not the way I do. But I'll tell you, I'm
glad
you're here. Go anytime, but I'm happy you're here. I wouldn't want you to leave. I'd miss you. You're the only thing . . . but that's not the point, really.
She'd
miss you. She wants you here too.”

“I don't think so.”

God, I can see him there before me slowly becoming a child. Those eyes. That panic. As if the only thing worse than my mother murdering Dustin Strauss would be me packing up and leaving town.

“I don't think she cares. She made it clear. I don't think she cares. Actually I think she wants me to go. That's the feeling I get.”

“I don't believe that,” he said.

I shrugged.

“Well, it's not forever. It's not as if you're planning on staying forever.” He turned away from me and brought his boots onto the bench.

A big table of guards was starting to fill up.

“How long is it, Dad?”

“As long as you want it to be. You can always leave.”

“For you, I mean. How long are you going to stay?”

“Oh. Well, forever, Joey. I'll be here forever.”

A wave of his hand. That was that. Life was life. Where else would he go?

“And you, Joey? What do you think? Hang around a while?”

F
ather was determined to find a job that might provide him health insurance, but after a while he gave up on that. He'd been called in for an interview at the college, and then at the hospital. Nothing came of either. Both were for janitorial jobs and they'd have made him miserable, but even still, those successive blows took their toll.

He went on about health insurance and I thought maybe he was suffering from some disease, something rotting him out from the inside. But he was healthy as anything—lean and muscular and solid. He wasn't a smoker. He ate pretty well. Kept weights and a bench on the little patio out back. He liked his walks. Maybe he drank too much, but who could blame him?

“It was just the idea,” he said. “Some security. Your mother and I have always had it. It was a point of pride. We swore we'd always have a home, enough food, and health insurance. These were the things we'd never give up. Whatever it took. But now we're in the wind,” he said. “At least your mother the killer is covered inside. But not us. This fucking country.”

After a while he gave up on the idea and took a job at Arbus Lumber and Feed where he worked their yard, hauling wood and cutting planks to size.

In my memory, those first months are often distinguished and delineated by his minor dreams—health insurance, a garden, the protection of my mother, the possibility of her softening, of Claire returning. And then he became focused on Tess.

In the evenings we were both home he would ask about her. Over dinner, or sitting in front of the fire drinking beer I would tell him what I could. At first I was a begrudging reporter. She grew up in San Francisco. She was an only child. Green eyes, brown hair. Her mother died of breast cancer. Her father remarried quickly. He has two young children now.

I thought I'd appease him, and then after a while he'd leave me alone to forget her. But he wanted to make that impossible. For my father and me she was a symbol of hope, I guess. As if her presence might provide answers to the problems of our lives.

“Tell me about Tess,” he'd say, but what he meant was, bring her here. He meant that she was the only thing that could save us. Not just me, but both of us. Bring her here, this woman I barely knew. This woman with whom I'd fallen so in love, who terrified me as much as my mother did, as much as the prison, as much as my awful new life, as much as the tar.

In those days I was constantly afraid. Of the specific and the general, the known and unknown.

I wouldn't want to return to that time, but I miss its sense of danger, of fragility. And I miss the fear as well.

After seeing my mother, I'd always leave exhausted and shaken. The sharp looks of the guards. The proximity to other prisoners. The awful sounds of those locks and doors. My mother herself. But I went anyway.

“I hear there's a girl,” she said, though she knew full well there was. She'd twice spoken to Tess on the phone while we were in Cannon Beach.

“There was.”

“Was?”

“Yes.”

“You're not together anymore?”

“No. I came here. So, no.”

“Well that was stupid,” she said. “Why would you do that? Didn't you love her? I hear you did. I hear you do.”

This was something new in her. The berating. The distance.

“Joey,” she said, warmer now. “Don't do that. Don't walk away.”

“Do you realize why I'm here? Why I left?”

“Yes, yes, yes, I know. You've said. For me, for me, you're here for me. But we've been over this. Why? Why would you leave the woman you love to be here with your mother? Why would you do that?”

I shook my head.

“You want me to be grateful? You want me to thank you for your loyalty? Would you be here if I weren't in prison?”

“No.”

“No. No, you would not be. But because I am, you are. Because I'm here, you give up your life? Because I did this one thing? Because of a few minutes in a parking lot? Does that seem like a good idea?”

No, I thought. No, it does not.

“Joey,” she said and took my hands. “You can't protect me. Go live. Go be with her.”

I was so angry.

“What's her name? Tell me her name.”

“Tess.”

“Tell me about her.”

“No,” I said.

She smiled and leaned back, drawing her hands away.

“Okay. Either way, you need to answer that question. What are you doing here without this girl you love?”

I stood up and left and got into my truck and tore out of there.

The questions were only part of the problem. What disturbed me as I drove home that afternoon was her aspect, her detachment, the loveless way she looked at me not as her son, but as her patient, her subject.

Something had gone missing and that absence scared me more than the prison, more than anything else. And so along with my sense (however misplaced, however wrongheaded) of duty, I suppose that's also why I stayed—the belief that somehow I might return this missing element to my mother. In being there, visiting her week after week, I might bring her some peace, give her back some warmth, staunch the flow of hot blood.

She seemed to be dying in there, all the softness vanishing and, reasonable or not, I wouldn't leave until I could change that.

Then I'd go.

Then I'd get on with my life.

I miss those days of fear and violence, days when love and desire always won out over reason.

I
n White Pine in October it began to rain. Massive storms barreling in off the ocean. Weeks and weeks of wet sunless days. The wind blew straight onshore. Days it was difficult to distinguish between ocean and land.