Deena Goldstone - Surprise Me

Almost immediately he gets Isabelle’s response.

Daniel,

There’s been a 7.1-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Philippines and Casey is there saving lives.

Isabelle

Well, that doesn’t tell him what he wants to know, but Daniel leaves it there, already a little embarrassed he asked the question in the first place. Too revealing. Her life has moved on. She’s involved with a guy who sees himself as a hero. Why does Daniel think she’d want anything to do with an old, broken-down writer who can’t even save one life — his own?

Isabelle rented half a bungalow in the flats of Oakland with the last of her summer salary, eking out just enough to cover first and last month’s rent and the security deposit. She found an old wooden house on Marston Street, built in the 1920s and reconfigured into two side-by-side apartments sometime after that. With its requisite low-pitched, gabled roof and horizontal wood siding, it is a perfect example of the California Craftsman Style which peppers the state. Each unit has its own small front porch held up by stone pedestals. That was the selling point for Isabelle, that quaint front porch with its white wooden railing, sitting four wide steps up from the street.

The living room overlooks the porch and has a large fixed window bordered by two smaller double-hung windows that open from the top and bottom. There is an eat-in kitchen with a window along the driveway, two small bedrooms, and a pink-and-black — tiled bathroom on the other side of the house. Isabelle and the tenant in the other unit, Mrs. Hershfeld, share the backyard, but so far Isabelle has seen her neighbor only when she hobbled out to hang a few pieces of hand-washed underwear on the ancient clothesline positioned behind the garage.

“It’s for you, too,” the older woman called as she struggled up the back stairs, her shockingly bright orange hair set in curlers, a cigarette packed into a lip so she can use both hands to haul herself onto the back stoop. Isabelle waved from her bedroom window, the one that overlooks the backyard, and smiled. They hadn’t yet formally introduced themselves, but Mrs. Hershfeld wasn’t standing on any ceremony. She wanted Isabelle to know she was welcome to hang her dripping intimates on the two skinny, sagging lines.

It took Isabelle about a week at the Hotel Durant without any sort of communication from Casey to realize she’d better make some decisions on her own.

I have to find us somewhere to live —that’s how she thought about it, without ever discussing it with Casey. Where can the two of us live? The classic bungalow on Marston, much rented but still adorable as far as Isabelle was concerned, would do perfectly.

Once her telephone service has been activated, Isabelle makes her way back up the hill to Orson Pratt’s house to give him the new, and now permanent, number. She knows she could simply call and deliver the information, but there’s a pull toward that house. She was so happy there. Bits and pieces of her life with Casey still reside there. She decides to walk up the hill. Seeing it all again, being there, will reinforce the necessary belief that it was all real.

Isabelle is immediately struck with the sense that climbing the steep stairway of railroad ties up to Orson Pratt’s house takes much more energy than she remembered. With Casey by her side, she would float upward to the front door, but today it’s hard work. Everything seems harder without Casey. She admits this to herself, but she won’t be undone by it. She’ll just tackle each thing as it comes along, she tells herself. And then he’ll be home and everything will ease into effortlessness again.

“This is the last time I’ll bother you,” Isabelle says as Orson opens the front door. His expression is hard to read. Is he annoyed with her still?

She hands him a small slip of paper with her new information carefully printed on it. “Here’s my new address — I’ve rented a duplex — and my phone number.”

“No more Hotel Durant?”

“God, no.” And then Isabelle adds, as if she’s made an unprecedented discovery, “Hotels are expensive.”

“No kidding?” And he’s smiling.

“Obvious, I know,” and she smiles back. A small détente.

“Oakland?” he asks her, looking at the address.

“Yes, but it’s just off College, not too far away. In Rockridge.”

“Did you walk?”

“Yes.”

And then Orson has an idea. “Wait a minute,” he says, and disappears into the house. He’s back immediately, a set of keys in his hand. “Take Casey’s Jeep. It’s just sitting in the garage taking up space. Along with all his other things,” Orson adds tartly and unnecessarily, despite his best intentions of holding his tongue.

“I don’t know.”

“Couldn’t you use a car, now that you’ve moved?” He watches her eyes fill with tears. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s just so kind of you to think of it.” Why is she crying? She has no idea. All she knows is that she’s embarrassed in front of this man she hardly knows.

“Are you all right?”

And now the tears won’t stop. She’s not sobbing or hysterical, she’s just awfully tired and worn-out and feeling alone and she can’t find the off valve for the tears.

“Come in,” Orson says.

“No, I couldn’t…”

“Just until you stop crying.” What else can he do? Send a crying woman away to weep alone?

He opens the door wider and Isabelle steps into the familiar living room, only now it looks like a photo from a home improvement magazine, everything dusted and cleaned and in its place. Perfect Iceland poppies, tissue-thin orange petals crinkled and curved into cups of color, sit in a crystal vase on the coffee table. All the throw pillows are plumped and arranged by contrasting colors on the neutral couch.

Isabelle sinks into a corner of the soft sofa and Orson sits at the opposite end, back straight, hands on his knees, watching Isabelle try to get a handle on her tears.

“I’m so sorry,” Isabelle says as she rummages in her large, satchel-like purse for a Kleenex. “I never do this. Really, I can’t remember the last time I cried. It’s just that…oh, I don’t know, maybe because I haven’t heard from Casey yet…”

“Uh-huh.” Orson is biting his tongue so he doesn’t say, “I tried to warn you” or some other harshness.

“It’s been over three weeks. And CNN isn’t interested anymore and so I really can’t get any information about what’s happening over there…” Isabelle trails off, heaving a big sigh. And then she squares her shoulders. “This is all so pathetic. Every time I see you, I’m one big pathetic mess, which is really weird because in my family, I’m the one who always keeps everyone else going. My mother is usually the mess, although she’d die before she accepted that label, and I’m the one who gets her through whatever crisis is causing the uproar, and here I am dissolving into tears for no reason whatsoever. I am so sorry.”

And then there’s silence — Isabelle has run out of apology, and Orson has no idea what would be an appropriate response to her confession.

“Well,” he says finally, in order to move her up and out of the house, “here are the keys to the Jeep. I’m sure Casey would want you to have it.” And he stands, places the keys in her hand to indicate that now that she’s no longer dripping tears his intervention is over, but Isabelle isn’t getting up.

“How do you know Casey?”

And Orson sits back down. “Casey and my son went to school together, from preschool through high school.”

“You have a son?” Isabelle is stunned. Orson seems such a singular presence, it never occurred to her he had children, a wife. There’s no trace of either in his house.