The Pleasure of My Company (16 page)

There
were unpredictable and unaccountable slowdowns until we passed some shopping
outlets in Palm Springs, where suddenly the road widened and flattened as
though it had been put through a wringer. We pulled in for fast food at
lunchtime, barely stopping the car. After four hours of driving we had not lost
our zing but had quieted into comfortable smiles and inner glows. Clarissa
checked her messages once. She listened, disappointment slithered across her
face, and she turned off the Nokia. I took the phone and stowed it in the car
door, which had a convenient space for miscellaneous storage.

We
continued heading south with the sun still high. I stole the occasional glance
and could see Clarissa in relief. Each eyelash was clearly defined against the
crisp background of desert and sky. She was an array of pastels, her skin with
its pink underglow set against white sand and the turquoise blue of her blouse.
I assembled from the sight of her, from memories of her, a clear picture of
Clarissa’s most touching quality: her denial of sadness. Only the most tragic
circumstances could take the smile from her face and the bounce from her walk.
Even now, as she fled from terror, she looked forward with innocence toward a
happiness that waited, perhaps, a few miles ahead.

Contained
in the hard shell case of Clarissa’s Dodge, I was remarkably and mysteriously
free from the stringency of the laws and rules that governed my Santa Monica
life. So I decided to engage Clarissa in conversation. Clarissa must have
decided the same thing, because before I could speak, she launched into a soliloquy
that barely required from me an uh-huh.

“I
think Chris saw me as his dolly,” she said. I knew from her icy inflection on
the word Chris that she meant her inseminator. “But there was no way I could
see it until we were married,” she went on. “He’s borderline; that’s what I
figured. A belligerent narcissist. He needs help, but of course why would
someone seek help if one of their symptoms is thinking everyone else is wrong?
I think I’m a narcissist, too. I’ve got a lot of symptoms. Four out of six in
the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.”

I didn’t
know what she was talking about. It seemed to me that “Chris” was simply a
violent son of a bitch. But I didn’t have to live with him. If I had to justify
someone to myself, I, too, would throw a lot of words at him. The more words I
could ascribe, the more avenues of understanding I would have. Soon, every
intolerable behaviour would have a syntactical route to my forgiveness:

“Oh, he’s
just exhibiting abstract Neo-juncture synapses,” I would say, and then try to
find treatments for abstract Neo-juncture synapses.

The
difference now between me and Clarissa was that she was yakking and I was
thinking. I felt I was in conversation with her; but my end of the dialogue
never got spoken. So my brilliant comments, retorts, and summaries stayed put
in my cortex, where only I would appreciate their clever spins and innuendos.

The
route from California to New Mexico essentially comprises one left turn. The
monotony of the road was a welcome comedown from the emotional razzmatazz of
our tiny lives in Santa Monica. We had practically crossed Arizona by day’s
end, and just shy of the border, we checked into the Wampum Motel, a joint with
tepee-shaped rooms and the musty scent of sixty years of transients. It fit our
budget perfectly because nobody wanted to stay there except the most down and
out, or college students looking for a campy thrill. The antique sign bearing
the caricature of an Indian was enough to cause an uprising.

I’m not
sure why Clarissa put us all in one room. Since I was paying, maybe she was honouring
the budget, or perhaps she saw us as the Three Musketeers who must never be
torn asunder. She got a room with twin beds and one bathroom. The lights were
so dim in the room that I had no wattage problem. All I had to do was leave the
bathroom light on, open the door one inch, and the room would be perfect for
sleeping.

This
arrangement also provided me with one of my life’s four or five indelible
images: After an excursion to the Wampum diner, we retired early to get a jump
on the next day’s drive. While Clarissa showered, Teddy slept securely in one
of the twins, buffered on two sides by a pillow and a seat cushion. I had
gotten in the other bed and turned out the light. I huddled up, trying to warm
myself under the diaphanous wisps that the Wampum Motel called sheets. The room
was lit only by moonlight, which seeped around every window blind and curtain.
I heard the shower shut off. Moments later Clarissa came quietly into the
room, leaving the bathroom light on per my request but closing the door behind
her. To her, the room was pitch black, but to me, having adjusted to the
darkness, the room was a patchwork of shadow and light. Clarissa, naked
underneath, had wrapped herself in a towel and was feeling her way across the
room. I was officially asleep but my eyes were unable to move from her.
Standing in profile against the linen curtain and silhouetted by the seeping
moonlight, she dropped the towel, raised a T-shirt over her head, and slipped it
on. Her body was outlined by the silvery light that edged around her and she
was more voluptuous than I had imagined. She then crouched down and fumbled
through a plastic bag, stood, and pulled on some underwear. I wondered if what
I had done was a sin, not against God, but against her. I forgave myself by
remembering that I was a man and she was a woman and it was in my nature to
watch her, even though her ease with taking off her clothes in front of me
could have been founded on the thought that she did not see me as a sexual
creature.

As
compelling as this event was, I did not infuse it with either the tangible heat
of desire or the cool distance of appreciation. For whichever approach I chose,
I knew it was bound to be unrequited, and so my dominant feeling for the rest
of the night was one of isolation.

The
morning was a blur of Teddy’s needs. Things clanked and jars were opened and
Clarissa turned herself away for breast-feeding. Though we slept well, we were
both tired and car-lagged from the travel. Still, we were on the road by 7 A.M.
and very soon we were in New Mexico.

New Mexico held me in a
nostalgic grip, even though I had never been there. Only after we’d spent six
hours crossing it before arriving in El Paso did I realize what was affecting me.
It was that southern New Mexico was beginning to look, feel, and taste like
Texas. Northern New Mexico was comparatively a rain forest; it looked as if an
extremely choosy nutrient were coursing underground. Rocks burst with colour.
Rainbow striations shot across the walls of mesas, then disappeared into the
ground. Dusky green succulents vividly dotted the tan hills, and the occasional
saguaro stood in the distance with its hand raised in peace like a planetary
alien.

But
southern New Mexico was arid, eroded, and flat. As we drove, Clarissa liked to
turn off the air-conditioning, roll down the window, and be dust-blown. I was
beginning to sunburn on the right side of my face, and we screamed a
conversation over the wind that ripped through the car. She told me that her
bank account was being depleted fast, that she was worried she would have to
quit school, thus ruining her chances of ultimately achieving a higher income.
She said she was concerned that she would have to move back to Boston per her
ex’s demand, and she didn’t understand why her ex even cared about whether
they were in Boston as he seldom exhibited any interest in Teddy. All this bad
news was delivered without self-pity, as if it were just fact, and I felt a
strong urge to cushion her fall as her life was collapsing. But I lacked any
ideas to support her except cheerleading. I suppose I could have been a moral
voice, but I was beginning to doubt my status in that department, too.

Our
conversation reminded me that I was also in financial trouble. Granny’s
intuition had saved me many times, but that form of rescue was now over. I
wondered if my pretence of having no need of money, to myself and to Granny,
was childish. My paltry government check was insufficient to support my
grand—compared to some—lifestyle. I knew that without Granny’s occasional rain of
money, there was going to be, upon my return to Santa Monica, a housing,
clothing, and food crisis.

In El
Paso we found a Jimmy Crack Corn motel that fit within my new scaled-down
notion of budget. I joked, “Discomfort is our byword.” To her credit Clarissa
laughed and agreed. We stayed in separate rooms as we sensed a wretched
bathroom situation, and we were right. Barely enough room for the knees.

The
motel had made one attempt at landscaping, a ramshackle wooden walkway arcing
over a concrete-bottomed pond. However disgusting it was for Clarissa and me to
look into its murk, Teddy considered it Lake Geneva; he wanted to swim, frolic,
water ski, and sail in its green sludge. We wouldn’t let him come in contact
with the mossy soup, so dense that it left a green ring around the edge of the
concrete, but I did make paper boats that Teddy was allowed to throw stones at
and sink.

In the
morning, Clarissa’s shower woke me and I could time my ablutions to hers thanks
to the paper-thin walls. We cleaned our teeth, peed, and washed simultaneously,
enabling me to appear outside my door at the same time she appeared outside
hers, and by 7 A.M., with Teddy already lulled into a stupor by the motion of the
car, we were on the final stretch to Helmut, Texas.

What happened under the
pecan tree qualifies as one of those events in life that is as small as an atom
but with nuclear implications.

Clarissa
and I had checked into a local motel, just a short hop from Granny’s, that
practically straddled the Llano River. It was set in a gnarly copse of juniper
trees whose branches had woven themselves into a canopy that threw a wide net
of shade. We were lucky to have found a low-cost paradise that had a number of
natural amusements for Teddy, including nut-finding, water-squatting, and
leaf-eating, and it was easy to idle away a few hours in the morning while we
laboriously digested our manly Texas breakfasts.

Before
lunch, Clarissa drove me to Granny’s. I had no recollection of how to get
there, though a few landmarks—the broadside of a white barn, a derelict gas
pump, a cattle grate—did jog my memory. But when we left the highway and drove
among the pecan groves whose trees overhung the road to the farm, I experienced
an unbroken wave of familiarity. The trees grew in height and density as we
neared the farmhouse, which was sheltered by a dozen more trees towering 150
feet in the air, protecting it from the coming summer heat. The house was a
single-story hacienda, wrapped around a massive pecan tree that stood in the
middle of a courtyard. The exterior walls were bleached adobe and the roof-line
was studded with wooden vigas. A long porch with mesquite supports, sagging
with age, ran the length of the house on three sides, and a horse and goat were
tied up near a water trough. The trees overhead were so dense that sunlight
only dappled the house even at this moment of high noon. A few rough-hewn
benches were situated among the trees. Attached to the house was a ramada woven
with climbing plants, at the end of which a tiled Mexican fountain flowed with
gurgling water, completing this picture of serenity.

There
were three cars parked outside, two were dilapidated agricultural trucks and
one a dusty black Mercedes. We pulled up and got out. A man in a tan suit swung
open the screen door. He held a slim leather portfolio that indicated he was
official. He said hello to us with a relaxed voice and we heard the first
southern drawl of the entire trip. We introduced ourselves and when I said I
was “Dan, grandson of Granny,” there was a frozen moment followed by, “Oh yes,
we’ve been looking for you.”

Clarissa
went off to the fountain to show Teddy its delights. I went into the farmhouse
with Morton Dean Argus, who turned out to be the lawyer for the estate. He
explained he had driven all the way from San Antonio and had stayed here on the
farm for the last three days to sort out issues among the few relatives who had
arrived in pickup trucks after the news got out. “Y’all arrive a half hour
later and I would-of been gone,” he said.

Everything
useful in the house had been sacked. Everything personal remained. Antique
family photos still hung on the walls, but the microwave oven had been removed.
The stove, a 1930 Magic Chef Range, was too ancient to loot, the marauders
having no idea of its value to the right aesthete chef. A cedar chest filled
with Indian rugs had been mysteriously overlooked. There were the occasional
goodies, including period equestrian tack used as wall decor, as well as a
small collection of heavy clay curios of sleeping Mexicans, whose original
bright colours had patinated to soft pastels.

Morton
Argus told me that Granny had been cremated and interred on the property under
a tree of her designation. He told me that a one-page will had been read and
that certain items— really merchandise—had been distributed to a few workers
and relatives. My sister, Ida, had been there, he said, and I felt a pang of
guilt that my sequestered lifestyle hadn’t allowed her to contact me more
quickly so I could have met her at the house. It was Ida, he said, who
coordinated the dispersal of furniture to a small swarm of needy relatives.

Ida was
three years younger than me. She’d moved to Dallas, married young, and borne
children, and she seemed untouched by the impulses that took me inside myself. “Did
my dad show up?” I said. Morton asked me his name. “Jack,” I said. No, he hadn’t.