The Salt God's Daughter (22 page)

In the middle of the night, Graham sat up suddenly. “A bird just hit the window.” He got up, racing to the porch. I followed him, telling him that it wasn't an omen, that we were safe. That nothing had happened. There was no bird lying in the sand and everybody was fine and he should go back to sleep. He shook his head. “Someone died.”

When my beeper went off the next morning, I kissed him and rushed out of bed. “See you in a little bit,” I said, leaving him sleeping.

Mr. Takahashi stood in the hallway, barefoot, his black pants rolled up to his knees. Dr. B. was behind him on her phone. “I don't know how much longer I can do this with him. I just don't know if he can stay,” she said, after hanging up. I didn't want to let him go. I'd brought him back too many times, and he didn't trust anyone but me.

Mr. Takahashi's eyes burned red. “My slippers. Diana, that thief.” He was time-traveling again, his slippers flung off the balcony in a fit of rage. He glanced at the door to the storage room.

“I bet I know where they are,” I said. He followed me into the storage room. I noticed the boxes and suitcases had been
rearranged. The room was toppled with abandoned chairs, upside down, piled onto one another, forts made from torn mattresses. The Easy-Bake Oven was dusted with fingerprints. Dolly and I had played with this oven as children. We'd acted out dinnertime scenarios that were not ours, but that we'd seen on television. We'd melted crayons in pie tins. We'd said, “Thank heavens” and, “Please pass the margarine.” Neither of which my mother ever said. Her almanacs were still in that box by the old card table.

“Where are my strawberries?” Mr. Takahashi asked. “Diana. She's the only one who remembers.”

“You grow the best strawberries in California. In the world,” I said, handing him his slippers from atop my mother's box. I pushed the box into the shadows. Back in his apartment, I fluffed his pillow and read him an article from
The Wall Street Journal
until he nodded off. I neatened up the newspapers on the black leather ottoman before I left.

Walking back down the hallway toward my apartment, I focused on the blue rectangle I'd passed through, morning, noon, and night. What was the worst thing that could happen? No one had promised me anything.

When I opened the door, I drew in my breath. I pulled off the tightly tucked blanket on the bed, as if I would find him. I rushed out onto the porch, hating the certainty of sunlight. He'd gone.

All signs of water had been scraped away.

In my mind, I made it halfway up the Jacob's ladder before I heard the knock on my door. Graham walked in with a bag of groceries and flowers. Dirt fell across my carpet as I took the bouquet of yellow wildflowers from his hands, roots still weeping. I put the flowers in a tall silver vase, added some sugar to the water. I set it on the kitchen table. Graham took out the avocados, peaches, and oranges and lined them up on the counter, satisfied. “I know you like avocados,” he said.

“If you're going to disappear, would you leave me a note?” His expression fell as he put the fruit and avocados in the bowl.

“I was trying to surprise you.” He poured a glass of whiskey and walked out onto the porch, closing the sliding glass door behind him. Turning on the faucet, I pushed my hands into cold water. I reached in further until I was wet up to my elbows. I leaned back against the refrigerator and shook off my hands.

That night, I sat up in bed, stilled by the sight of him dreaming, the twitch of his closed eyelids, the strength of his hands folded on his bare chest, the rise and fall of his slightly bowed stomach, the dark line of hair curling beneath his navel. “I've never asked anything of you,” I said out loud. I said it again, this time louder. But he didn't hear me.

We woke at dawn, fingers twisted together; the walls that we'd created had come down. We held each other, arms and legs entwined as though having found, for a few minutes, that which got us through the separations and the loneliness. He faced me, staring through me in a way that had excited me at first, the night I met him, but now seemed a replacement for the true bond I imagined. He kissed my forehead and lips and rubbed my shoulders and my hands and gazed into my eyes and told me I was the most wonderful woman in the world, and that he wanted nothing more than to make me happy. But I knew. I nodded and closed my eyes. With his heavy legs slung over mine, I let myself fall asleep. When I woke, I was alone in the bed. I ran to the balcony. I didn't see him. It was pouring rain. I grabbed my raincoat and ran outside, looking for footprints. I waded into the gold-gray water, the bottom of my white nightgown soaked three inches from the hem. He hadn't left a note.

The beach was empty. There was no one here, not even the Sisters.

DOLLY SAID I shouldn't worry that she would say, “I told you so
.”
“I've got your back. But see, this is what happens when you walk among the regular people.”

“Outlaws,” I said, without enthusiasm.

It was a combination of chemistry and memory that created your tipping point. You would feel your heart racing, as if escaping from a lion in the jungle, or running behind a car that was driving away. That image of your sneakers in a midnight puddle on the side of the road would be forever etched in your memory. Dolly, who knew about the science of trauma because of her work, said that in the midst of a trauma, your brain would take in every detail: the smell of gasoline in the rain, the scrape of tree bark against your palm, a particular shade of lipstick. This was a survival mechanism, whether you were a caveman, a librarian, or a beauty queen. If you suddenly had to run, you could count on the fact that your body was prepared to defend your life.

If you were raised in the back of a station wagon, the paths to excitement and fear were the same, becoming your one-way highway. It was not unusual to have trouble saying “stop.”

 

I STILL WORE my plain gray sundress when Dolly dragged me out “to look. Just to look.” My hair grew curlier, lighter, a honeyed shade of red-gold. I cut low bangs across my eyes. I wore my wire-rimmed glasses religiously. According to Dr. B., beauty was in the expression of self-acceptance. Graham had “the eyes of a storm,” she said, and he wasn't much for small talk. She'd run into him in the hallway the last time he'd left. Not that anybody was interrogating me, but it was all they could do to keep quiet this long.

 

ON A FRIDAY night before sundown, we gathered in Mrs. Green's apartment for Shabbat dinner. We stood under the tallith as she welcomed the Shekhinah, closing her eyes and whispering, “Thank you for all of this. My friends. My sweet Saul is still with me. Life is good
.”

She'd made broiled chicken, the skin buttery and crisp, soaked with paprika. A thick pair of men's glasses was pushed back in her hair. The glasses were large and square, with big black plastic frames.

“Is something burning?” I asked.

“My oven. I've cleaned it three times this month, but I can't get rid of that burnt smell,” she said as she quickly reached up, retrieving the glasses and tucking them into the pocket of her apron, next to two paintbrushes. “Isn't this silly? I wear Saul's glasses sometimes. I walk around this apartment wearing them when I can't remember the sound of his voice. It helps me.”

It bothered me that she thought she had to explain herself to us. I didn't want her to. “Understandable, Fay,” Dr. B. said. “How many people survive two more years after being given six months? You're both brave.”

“We're only brave for each other,” Mrs. Green said. Each morning, she'd return to her husband at the nursing home. Then she'd come home in the afternoon to paint her way back into her other world. She had figured out how to live in both worlds.

As she said the prayers over the wine and the bread, I glanced at my sister, whose hair was pulled back tight in a high ponytail. With no makeup, Dolly looked like a child. She wore my mother's Jewish star and a plain black shirt with black jeans. Her olive skin appeared tan, healthy.

“Is your relationship with Graham exclusive, child?” asked Dr. B. over dinner. “Are you his; is he yours? As in, you don't go with other people?”

“Let Ruthie get some nourishment first. Before she has to answer all these questions.” Mrs. Green nodded at Dolly and poured herself some Manischewitz.

“What am I doing here?” I asked Dolly.

“Welcome to your intervention,” Dolly said, lifting her glass.

I looked at each of them. “You're kidding, right?”

“Ruthie, can we invite him for supper one night? Nothing fancy. I used to have eighteen people for dinner on the high holidays. What does Graham like to eat? I'll make his favorite dish. Dolly, you'll bring a guest, too.”

“You've never brought someone home, that's all,” said Dr. B., touching my arm. “We'd like to get to know him, Ruthie.”

“He's a fisherman,” I said. I glanced at my sister, and she looked away. Dr. B. asked, “What type of boat?”

“A fisherman's boat,” Dolly said, when she saw my hesitation.

“Nobody is easy,” said Mrs. Green. “Do you understand what I mean when I say I have a good marriage but not an easy marriage?” I nodded, lifting my glass to my lips, though I didn't understand.

“We're glad you met someone. Ruthie. We just hope he's nice.”

In that instant I saw in Dr. B.'s eyes what I knew to be true. “I promised your mother a long time ago I'd watch over you.”

“Ruthie thinks that everyone who loves her is good. It's not her fault,” Dolly said, meeting my gaze, saving and abandoning me.

“Why don't you be quiet?” I asked her.

“I won't, Moose. He'll be with you until there's another you at the next port.”

“That's a cliché,” I said. “No one really does that.”

Mrs. Green got up from the table. A moment later, she stood near the porch. “Ruthie, could you come here for a minute? While I'm thinking of it, I've been meaning to show you this.” Gratefully, I got up. She unrolled a print of a Winslow Homer painting called
Jumping Trout
. She told me that years after Homer's death, they had x-rayed his work, trying to
dissect his calculations with infrared light. There was much to be unearthed, to uncover all the plotting and thought that had gone into this work. Some artists were scientists, this one in particular. Beneath the fish is one dab of bright red paint, a caster's fly. A dab of Cadmium Red on top of a mixture of browns that placed the entire painting, she said. The dash located all the angst and fear, the wanting and escape of the hunt, the rapids behind the fish, the speckles and bars on its lower half, its ferocity, all movement and energy in that one single red note, in that perfect as-if-an-afterthought flick of the wrist.

“It's time for soup,” Mrs. Green announced, rolling the print back up in the canister. Then she whispered, “Only you know what you have with Graham. No one else has to understand it. But you do,” she said, squeezing my hand.

Dr. B. would try to assuage me with stories of a failed love affair. Her first love would have been the perfect man if not for the fact of a wife in another place. When she found out, it was like getting hit by lightning, she said. “I fell hard. It was difficult to recover.”

“Ruthie falls hard for wounded animals,” said Dolly, resting her chin on her palm.

“Because I am one,” I said.

Mrs. Green pulled her long gray sweater more tightly around her. “It's freezing in here. Is anybody else freezing?”

“You need to know who this man is,” said Dr. B. Dolly nodded.

Mrs. Green patted my hand. It startled me, as if I had been splashed with cold water.

 

ON THE NIGHT of the Grass Moon in May, Graham came back. We sat on my porch, talking about how the
Queen Mary
was haunted. I recalled the times we'd strolled through the cabins and the restaurants on board and he hadn't said a word
about what he knew. She'd been built in Scotland in the early 1930s, he said now. “In World War II, she was called the
Gray Ghost
. They painted her like a battleship,” he said. I remembered Sasha and Sam at the Sands Restaurant when I was a child. I remembered her description of the blurry discs that floated over the heads of travelers, that people tried to capture them. I wondered why.

The next day, I brought Graham to the Sheet Metal Moon Café, where we ate chili and listened to music and the coffee machine, amid the shouts of the children who congregated outside. I never saw Edna, but I always expected to. It always seemed like she should be there, but she never was.

We drove up and down the coast and cased the beach towns. Venice, Huntington, Laguna. We drifted by the street peddlers' baskets of jewelry, the silver and turquoise bracelets, coral rings, and copper bangles. We had dinner on the garden porch of a restaurant, where metallic trees sprayed mist across our table to cool us. We talked over mariachi music and sipped cold glasses of syrupy red drinks, chunks of pineapple or cut strawberries on the rim. We filled up on nachos and salsa and let the alcohol go to our heads. We did what other couples did, or what we imagined they did.