Wendy Hornsby - The Color of Light

“Don’t even try to pick me up,” I said. “Evening traffic out of San Francisco is impossible. I’ll hop on BART and meet you.”

There was a little back and forth, but when I explained how long it would take for him to make the round trip from the City to Berkeley and back again during rush hour, he reluctantly agreed. We decided I would meet him at about 6:45 at the San Francisco consulate on Kearney Street, near Union Square, giving me time and a place to freshen up before the event.

“Exactly what is the dress code?” I asked. He had only extended the invitation the previous afternoon during a brief conversation that was soon interrupted on his end by a work-related issue.

“Dress code?” he asked.

“Where on the scale between street sweeper and Marie Antoinette should I aim my attire?”

“Ah. I didn’t tell you? So sorry. What an idiot I am.” I heard papers rustle, then a muttered merde before he came back on the line. “The worst, I’m afraid. Black tie. Is that a problem?”

“No,” I lied. Who packs formal evening gear to go clear out the family manse? There was enough time, however, for me to come up with something; the Bay Area is hardly a shopper’s wasteland.

“Chérie,” he said before I had found my opening to invite him for the weekend. “How is the house clearing progressing?”

“Slowly,” I said. “I didn’t realize how much there was to do.”

“I have no reason to be back in Los Angeles until Monday morning.”

“If that’s an offer, I accept,” I said. Bless his heart.

“The weekend dress code is what you call grubbies?”

“Yes. And bring something to wear to a backyard Hungry Ghosts celebration Saturday afternoon.”

“I am afraid to ask what that is,” he said.

“It’s an Italian neighbor’s version of the Vietnamese version of the end of Hungry Ghosts Month. As I understand it, the gates of the underworld have been open all month and the spirits of our ancestors have been wandering among us. If you’ve taken care all year to honor your ancestors and they lived good lives and died well, they won’t cause mischief to you. But if they’ve been neglected or they lived or died badly, then they are doomed to wander as lost and hungry spirits. They slip through looking for food and maybe a living person to trade places with. You have to make a special effort to bribe the hungry ghosts so that they go back into the underworld for another year. And that’s what we’ll do Saturday.”

“Ghosts?” he said, sounding bemused.

“You don’t believe in ghosts?”

“I believe they reside in the imaginations of the living.”

“C’est ça,” I said, borrowing the expression from him.

“What does one wear to a Hungry Ghosts celebration?”

“Anything comfortable as long as it isn’t black. Think backyard barbecue.”

He laughed. “ Bon. I’ll bring chocolates.”

A Prius pulled up to the curb in front of the house and a woman in her early forties got out. From the looks of her, slacks and a tailored shirt, and her accoutrements, a clipboard and a camera, I assumed she was the staffer from the housing office. She paused on the sidewalk to take a few pictures of the front of the house. I rose and started down the walk to meet her.

“I need to say good-bye,” I told Jean-Paul. “I have a visitor.”

“À demain,” he said.

“Until tomorrow.”

It seemed to me that the woman from University Housing, Evelynne M. Sanchez according to the card she gave me, had a bit of an attitude, as if she were put upon by the chore of this visit. I did not understand why she would be. It seemed to me, and to the people Mom had spoken with at the housing office, that Mom was doing the university a favor by leasing the house for their use.

The cost of housing in the San Francisco Bay Area is wickedly high, a problem whenever the university wants to recruit talented researchers and faculty. In recognition of that problem, and as a sort of memoriam to Dad who always put up visiting colleagues, the rent Mom was asking covered property taxes, insurance, a reserve account to cover repairs and maintenance, and little else. The bite was far below the going market rate for a house its size in the area. I did not expect Ms Sanchez to bow down in gratitude, but I thought a certain level of professional politesse was called for.

“How much of this furniture will remain?” she asked, running her hand over the surface of a very old table with a marquetry-work top that Dad had found left on a curb by a student who was moving out of an apartment.

“The house will be fully furnished,” I said. “But exactly which pieces will be here and which won’t I can’t say until Monday. A family member is coming to decide on things she might want.”

“The pianos?” Ms Sanchez asked.

“Mom is keeping the baby grand, but the upright in the sun porch is staying if you want it.”

As she opened kitchen cupboards stocked with crockery and cutlery and pots and pans she said, “You know to expect wear and tear. If any of this-” Ms Sanchez turned over a dinner plate and checked the trade mark on the bottom before putting it back on the shelf. “Things do get broken.”

“Mom expects that families will live here,” I said, stowing Beto’s food containers into the refrigerator. “And that they will make themselves comfortable for the duration of their stay. She isn’t leaving anything that is particularly valuable or irreplaceable.”

I walked her upstairs and showed her the bedrooms and the bathrooms.

“As far as I know, the house is in good repair,” I said as we toured. “Mom put on a new roof late last winter and repainted all the rooms upstairs. The water heater is only a couple of years old and the gravity heater in the basement has always been more than adequate. The house is within the university’s Wi-Fi umbrella, so residents will be able to connect online using their Cal accounts.”

“Is there a full basement?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “The gravity heater is in a big cement-lined hole under the house. There’s an access hatch in the dining room.”

I saved the master bedroom for last because it was a mess. Mom had left her wardrobe rejects in a heap on the bed for me to bag and deliver to the women’s shelter thrift store. Stacks of books on the floor were waiting to be boxed and taken to the library’s used book store.

A muslin garment bag hanging on the closet door caught my eye. Mom had debated whether to take the dress inside with her, or to leave it. In the end, she decided that she could no longer bring herself to wear something that plunged in the back. She could also not bring herself to throw that particular dress onto the heap with the others. For decades, the dress had been her favorite to wear out on special evenings. It was a genuine couturier designed and crafted floor-length gown, made originally for some San Francisco society maven; her initials were embroidered into a side seam. Mom bought it at an Opera Guild rummage sale, but even at rummage sale prices it had been a splurge for her.

While Ms Sanchez was looking through the en suite bathroom, I took the dress out of the bag and gave it a careful going-over, thinking that I might have something to wear to Jean-Paul’s reception after all.

The dress was as timelessly elegant as I remembered: long sleeves, a ballerina neckline, the lines kept from being severe by an almost daring plunge in back and the graceful way the skirt swirled around the legs. The fabric, a tissue-thin black silk and wool knit, had some benevolent give. Cut on the bias, the dress was narrow through the midriff and then gradually flared; a wonderful dress to dance in. I hadn’t asked Jean-Paul if there would be dancing.