Shelter Us: A Novel (17 page)

I
pull away
from the curb, not caring where I’m going. Just away. After two blocks I pull over, cover my face with my hands, and let out a pent-up moan until there’s no air left in my lungs. A barely detectable breeze rustles the few intrepid leaves that cling to a scrawny tree growing out of the sidewalk. It’s the only tree on the whole block.

I have to get out of here. I drive north, pulled toward Berkeley. I need to be drenched in our old neighborhood. Maybe I can find solace in a familiar café, or even find my way to Tilden Park. Maybe the scenery—the clunky cars held together by lefty bumper stickers, the verdant fullness of the leafy trees, the earnestness of the under-grads—will restore me to who I used to be.

It’s been so long since I’ve driven these roads, but some buried instinct leads me to the University Avenue exit, toward campus and downtown Berkeley. There’s mild traffic, which lets me take in my neighborhood of nostalgia at a comfortable speed. I pass the market I used to shop at, my favorite burrito place, the Indian sari store I never entered. So much is the same. I turn left at Shattuck, and more memories surface, stirred by sights that used to be my daily backdrop, as insignificant as they were reliable—the first place I tried sushi, the gift shop where I bought Robert a one-month-anniversary card, the café where we studied for the Bar Exam.

I fell in love with Robert on these blocks.

I park in the first open spot I see and walk in the direction of my
old apartment. The sky is true Berkeley blue. I inhale its freshness, infused with redwood oxygen, so different from Los Angeles, even in the coastal pocket of clean air where my family lives.

In front of me on the sidewalk, an elderly couple walks in unison, papery hands clasped tightly. Their hair is the same shade of white. He is wearing a brown cardigan, she a green one. I can’t take my eyes off their hands, the link between them. I wait behind them on the corner at a D
ON’T
W
ALK
sign. When the light turns green for us, the man steps off the curb, unsteady at first, then plants his legs. He turns to the woman and holds his right arm as steady as he can, and she steps down, with effort. They begin their paces together until they reach the other side. He steps up first, and then pulls her up to the safety of the sidewalk. His tenderness nearly undoes me; his instinct to take care of her when he’s hanging by a thread to his own independence. Will Robert and I have that in forty years?

Two storefronts past the intersection, I come face-to-face with a sandwich board on the sidewalk: G
LOBAL
S
ERVICE
A
DVENTURES
, it reads. W
ALK IN AND
C
HANGE A
L
IFE
.

Holy shit. This is Brian Kennedy’s place.

I walk in.

Brian was my only boyfriend before Robert, and that was back in high school. He was handsome and athletic; he got good grades and was captain of the high school basketball team. Naturally, I was shocked when he asked me out. If we hadn’t spent two years together in Spanish class—while I struggled with the language that should have been my birthright—I don’t think he’d have known I existed. But he did ask, and I said yes, and we became a couple. We held hands. I cheered for him at city championships. I turned inside out with awkward blushing (and a dash of “so there, cool girls”) when he kissed me in front of the whole school. I practiced signing my name “Sarah Kennedy” and fantasized we’d get married and be happy like my parents.

When I told him my parents were going to Santa Barbara for their
anniversary and leaving me home alone, he suggested we have a “momentous weekend” of our own. I think “go all the way” was the charming phrase he used, as only a high school boy could say with a straight face.

When they left, I knew Brian would be waiting for my call, but I wanted to enjoy the solitude of the house for a while. And, to be honest, I was nervous about crossing that particular bridge into adulthood. Sex. I thought everyone else at school had already done it. (I was wrong.) So I delayed. I opened the fridge and made myself a snack. I watched TV. Finally, I worked up my nerve to call him.

After the first ring, he answered with a sultry “Hellooo?” He’d been waiting. “Are you alone, my lovely?” he asked. I wondered if he was trying out the sound of “my love” but chickened out at the end, adding the “-ly.” That was fine with me. I wasn’t ready to say it back.

“They just left,” I said, trying to sound both eager and nonchalant.

“I’ll be right over!” He hung up without another word.

My heartbeat sped up. I couldn’t say if I was excited or scared. I was pretty sure I wanted to do this. Two minutes later, the doorbell rang.
Whoa
, I thought.
That was fast
. I walked to the door, tried to calm down, and opened it to find my grandmother filling its frame.

“Saaaarrrraaah!” Bibi sang my name the way she always did. “I came to keep you company. I thought you might be lonely.” She walked past me into the house.

“I’m fine, Bibi. Actually, I have tons of homework I need to work on.”

“You have homework already? I thought school didn’t start until next week.” It felt treasonous to lie to her. I was certain she could read my dishonest face. But she let it pass. “Well, okay, then I’ll just stay for a little visit. Shall I make us something to eat? Are you hungry?”

“Actually, I just had . . .” I started, but she wasn’t listening. She marched toward the kitchen, and I moved out of her path. I stepped out the front door to keep a lookout for Brian. He pulled around the corner in his red Jeep Cherokee, which had become his pride and joy when his brother had gone to college the year before and left it at home. The Jeep was part of his cool factor. He parked, and I ran to the sidewalk to meet him before he got out.

“You have to go,” I said with urgency. “My grandmother came over.”

“What? Are you kidding?”

“No! You have to go. If she sees you, she’ll know. She’ll move in!”

“But . . . ?” He looked as though he’d just been told he’d lost his place on the basketball team.

“I’ll call you when it’s clear. Just go.” I turned around and ran toward the house. I walked through the front door as my grandmother was coming out of the kitchen, balancing a plate of cookies on top of two mugs of tea.

“Where did you go? I was talking to you, and then I turned around and you weren’t there.”

“Oh, sorry. What were you saying?” I said, taking the plate and avoiding her question.

She placed the mugs on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa, and I plopped down next to her. “I was saying I can’t believe you’re going to be a senior. It feels like I was just swaddling you and rocking you to sleep.”

I leaned into my grandmother and smelled her familiar smells—sunscreen and face powder. I thought of how she used to tuck me between two big, warm towels when she took me to the beach, just the two of us. I’d watch her swim past the waves and bodysurf into shore while I stayed snug in my cotton cocoon in the sunshine.

“It kinda seems fast to me, too. I can’t believe next year I’ll be in college.” With that, we sat quietly for a while. I cuddled up next to her, feeling surprisingly happy that it was Bibi next to me on the couch and not Brian. With my head on her shoulder, I asked, “Bibi, can you stay with me while Mom and Dad are gone?”

“Absolutely,
cariño
,” she said without hesitation. She stroked my hair for a moment and then stood. She smoothed her pants and said, “I’ll go get my bag out of the car.” My look—surprised, amused, berating—brought her explanation: “I thought you might ask.” As she walked to the door, she was in take-charge mode. “I’ll make us something delicious for dinner.”

As soon as she left, I phoned Brian. “Bad news,” I said. “My grand-ma’s staying.”

“What? Oh no!”

“I know. I’m so bummed.” I tried to match his disappointment. “We’ll figure something out. But I can’t talk. She’s right here.”

He grunted.

“See you Monday, okay?”

There was a moment of silence as the reality sank in for him. “Yeah, see ya Monday.” Another pause. “Have fun with your grandma.” And he hung up. Later that weekend, everything changed.

In the aftermath of my parents’ accident, Brian and I broke up, our young “love” unconsummated. It wasn’t his fault. He was a seventeen-year-old boy. He tried to be kind, but I wasn’t the same girl I’d been. I withdrew. I wouldn’t return his phone calls. Eventually he gave up and stayed away from me. I understood; I wished I could get away from me, too. We went to different colleges—he to Berkeley, and me to Mills. Thirty minutes apart, but separate enough to seal our disconnection.

Until I ended up in Berkeley for law school. He worked near my apartment, and it wasn’t long before we bumped into each other. We became awkward acquaintances. It was hard to deny the dormant physical attraction—he was even better-looking than he had been in high school—but he was a reminder of that awful weekend of my parents’ accident. We kept our exchanges distant, polite. We never discussed our foiled plan, but it was there between us. When Robert and I began dating, I told him about my history with Brian. I told Robert everything then. He handled it with the confidence of a man who’d sized up the competition and concluded there was none.

If I’d had to predict where Brian would have ended up, I’d have said he’d be married to his third wife, driving a BMW, and living a safe, corporate, affluent life. But he went through a transformation during college. I heard it began as a bet with a fraternity brother—something stupid about March Madness, I think. But the outcome was serious: whoever won the bet would spend spring break in Mazatlan, drinking tequila and hooking up at wet T-shirt contests. The loser would spend a week building houses in Costa Rica. Brian lost.

When he tells this story, he says he won, because he found his calling. He now runs the local chapter of Global Service Adventures, the nonprofit that sent him to Costa Rica. He enlists hundreds of college kids and retirees to volunteer in developing countries every year. I doubt he would have predicted this for himself back when we were in high school, but he now says it was fate.

I don’t believe in fate, but I get why people would. It’s a primal human longing to attribute meaning to events, whether accidents or deliberate acts. To blame a greater force for choices and mistakes we make, and for happenstances good and bad. So here I am, hundreds of miles from my family, deceiving them about my reason for leaving. Here I am, agonizing about the safety of a boy I never met. Here I am, at the threshold of Brian’s office, freed from obligations and unmoored from everything that defines me—as wife, mother, daughter, granddaughter. Here I am, not knowing what will come next, with nothing and no one but myself to hold responsible.

I let my eyes adjust to the dark interior, such a change from the bright day outside. A young woman sits behind a counter, talking on the phone. Brochures are placed on tables, posters of landscapes and smiling children cover the walls, country names emblazoned beneath: C
OSTA
R
ICA
, G
UATEMALA
, N
EPAL
, V
IETNAM
. I look closely at the Guatemala poster, sizing up the women and children. If Bibi hadn’t left, I might have been in that poster.

The woman on the phone smiles at me and holds up a finger to say, “I’ll be right with you.” In one poster, a woman holds her baby on her back; he’s wrapped in a bold-colored cloth that binds him to her as she picks coffee beans in a lush field. In another, a group of children with brown skin and almond-shaped eyes beam pure smiles. They are barefoot on a muddy road, and buckets of water they’ve no doubt carried for miles rest beside them. They’re among the poorest people on the planet. I think about where I met Josie and Tyler, on a sidewalk under a freeway, and I wonder if it’s worse to be poor in the
lush, abundant jungle of an impoverished country or in the bustling urban core of a wealthy one.

“Hi, thanks for waiting. Can I help you?” The young woman flashes an eager smile in the effort to snare a new do-gooder. She has the air of a Jehovah’s Witness missionary ringing a doorbell, praying for someone to open the door and accept a pamphlet.

“Um, yeah. I’m a friend of Brian Kennedy?” Why do I sound like a nervous teenager? I try to change my voice, find some confident detachment. “I’m in town, and I was just walking by, so I thought I’d say hello.”

“Oh, bummer—he’s not here. He went out. It’s kind of quiet this time of year, since spring break is over. We’ll be gearing up for summer trips soon, though.” Her smile shows off a gold stud in her tongue. “I can leave a message for him if you like.”

“No, that’s okay.” But I don’t feel quite ready to leave. “Have you been on one of these trips?”

“Oh, yeah, totally. I’ve been twice.”

“Where did you go?”

“I was in Oaxaca. I worked at an orphanage there. Totally incredible. I went back to the same place. Are you thinking of going on a trip with us?”

“No. Not really. I mean, I wasn’t. But maybe I would.” I glance again at the Guatemala poster. “My grandmother is from Guatemala.”

“Really? Cool. I know we go there. Let me check when the next trip is.” She goes to her computer screen and starts to type. Maybe that isn’t a bad idea. Maybe a week somewhere would help me. “Oh, come on!” she scolds the screen. “This computer likes to act up. I’ll reboot it. It’ll just be a few minutes.”

The delay takes the wind out of my idea. I don’t need to get involved with Brian’s thing. “That’s okay. I’m fine.”

She looks up at me. “You sure? It’s no trouble.” Her fish is slipping off her hook.

“Yes. Thanks for your help.” I head back out to the bright sidewalk and continue down Shattuck. After I walk one block, the smell of
baked bread at the Cheese Board awakens my appetite for the first time today. Robert and I used to treat ourselves to the pastry specials when we were studying for finals. Heaven on earth, we used to call it. I can practically taste it already. I knew coming to Berkeley would help.