Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

“I think Doctor had some words with her when she refused to come in,” Amy said repressively. “I believe he discharged her.”

“Shit! He can’t do that!” I shouted. “Sorry, Amy. It’s not your fault. But Ina is my right hand; I can’t manage that old…Mrs. Fowler without her. You tell Pom—”

“He is going to be tied up most of the day,” Amy said. I could have sworn there was satisfaction in her voice. “He is most adamant about your coming to pick Mrs. Fowler up, though. Oh, and one more thing—”

I drew a long breath.

“And that is?”

“He has made Glynn an appointment with a new therapist tomorrow at two P.M. Dr. Ferguson; we think very highly of him. He specializes in families. He will want to see you, too.”

I did not speak. A red mist of rage seemed to start on the horizon and roll toward me. I watched it with fascination.

“Are you still there, Merritt?” Amy said. “We must insist that you pick up Mrs. Fowler as soon as it is possible. She is utterly out of control. Yesterday she got away from me and got into the swimming pool and I had to go in after her clothed. My foundation garment was ruined.”

A great yelp of laughter escaped me. I simply could not help it. The red mist dissipated.

“You give Doctor a message for me, Amy,” I said, choking on laughter. “You tell Doctor that Mrs. Doctor and Daughter Doctor are not coming home on the noon plane today. It will be two or three days, at least. I will let him know when we decide. And we will not be here after an hour or so.”

“Where may I tell him you are going?” Amy said. She sounded as if she were trying to speak with her jaws wired shut.

“You may tell him,” I said, “that we are going to the movies.”

5

In the middle of my first night in California I woke feeling that I was on a boat and lay awake trying to think why that might be. After a moment of profound disorientation, in which the light of a whiter moon than any I knew at home flooded a room I could not put a name to, I remembered where I was and why, and sat up. The green glow from Laura’s digital bedside clock said four ten a.m. I sat listening, holding my breath, but heard no sound that would account for the boat notion. The house was silent and still, and presently I got up and pulled on my robe and went into the adjacent bathroom. The top floor of the condominium was chilly, and the air that poured in through the window I had opened was dry and sharp and smelled of the desert. I thought of my child sleeping in a narrow twin bed across the hall from me, in Laura’s guest room, and wondered if her sleep was troubled, and if she, too, dreamed of boats. I had a sudden, nearly irresistible urge to tiptoe across and open the door and look at her, but hesitated to wake her. She needed respite from the tension of the night before, and so did I. Tomorrow, I thought. We can sort it all out tomorrow. Or rather, later today.

I had turned on the cold water tap and was bending to splash my face when the cold tile floor beneath my bare feet rolled greasily, as if it were the deck of a boat. It rolled again, more strongly. I clutched the sides of the washbasin, thinking that I had not, after all, dreamed the motion. But what could it be? The floor seemed to undulate, and I felt queasy and queer. Was I going to faint, had an illness of some sort overtaken me? It was not until I noticed that the glass accessories on the countertop were tinkling and the towels were swaying on their bars that I thought: earthquake. By the time the terror hit, the motion had stopped.

I cannot remember a simpler and deeper fear. It had never occurred to me that the real terror of an earthquake is not, in its first instant, the threat of injury or death, but the simple betrayal of one’s primal covenant with the earth. With that connection gone, anything at all is possible; no horror imaginable is beyond possibility. It is the old, cold, howling terror of the abyss, that black and limitless space that underlies all the armaments and rituals of the human condition. We all sense it is there, in the deepest and most unexamined core of us, but there are few things that call it out past the careful layers of civilization. The convulsing of the earth is one.

I froze to the washbasin, holding my breath, and then turned and fled from the bathroom straight downstairs, where a light burned. I would remember that flight with shame for the rest of my life. When the earth began to retch, I ran, not to my child, but to the light. The fact that there was no light and no stirring in Laura and Glynn’s bedroom assuaged the guilt only slightly. I like to think that if I had heard evidence of alarm from my daughter I would have gone there instantly, but now I will never know for sure. It was the first chink in the surface of my selfhood, the first of my intimations that Merritt Fowler might not be Merritt at all, but someone unknown to me.

Downstairs a single lamp burned, and Stuart Feinstein sat on the sofa wrapped in a beautiful, dark fur throw, sipping from a glass of amber liquid. His face was so gray and ravaged that at first I thought the same fear that had frozen me had gripped him, but then he saw me and gave me the sweet child’s smile, and the grayness receded somewhat. It was not fear, I saw, but illness and despair.

“Did our little twitch wake you, dollbaby?” he said.

“Twitch! My God! It felt like…I thought for a minute I was on a boat! The floor rolled—”

“About a three point eight or a four,” he said. “A mere shiver. We get one like that about twice a week, maybe more this summer. We have ever since I came out here. I don’t even get out of bed anymore unless I hear wood splintering. I used to lie there and listen to the Waterford crashing, until I got smart and packed it all up. This was nothing, I promise. Come here and have a snort with me.”

I went over and sat on the opposite end of the sofa. He tossed the end of the throw over me and passed me his glass, and I drank. It was scotch, very good scotch. Even I could tell that. My usual drink is vodka in whatever is tart or sweet, and then not often.

“Thanks,” I said, passing the glass back to him. “I needed that, as they say.”

“Thank you,” he said, and when I looked at him inquiringly, he said, “For not being afraid to drink after me. Or for not showing it if you were. Is this your first earthquake?”

“I work with AIDS patients at home,” I said. “I’m not afraid. And yes, it is my first earthquake. Now that I am afraid of.”

“Don’t be. Like I said, we get them all the time. We’re close to the San Andreas here, and it grumbles constantly. But it’s already had its big one; we’re not scheduled for another thirty years. San Francisco, now, that’s another story. The Hayward is ripe.”

“How do you know? How can you be sure of all that?”

“I can’t, of course,” he said, running his hand over the rich, shining folds of the mink. “But the odds are good. That’s about all anybody can hope for, isn’t it?”

I could see blue veins through the dry, crepey skin of his hands, and fancied that I could see the bird’s bones themselves. Stuart Feinstein was a man who would know about odds. Somehow the thought, or perhaps the whiskey, made me relax.

“I’ll go back to bed and let you get some sleep in a minute,” I said. “But first, tell me about this movie Laura is in. Tell me about this Caleb Pringle. There’s something there, isn’t there? They’re something to each other, or were…?”

He took a deep swallow and made a face and put the glass down on the coffee table.

“The movie’s good. Her part is good, and she’s very good in it. She’s a real actress, you know; this part could be the one that gets these schmucks out here to see that in her, and not just her tits and ass. There’s a lot riding on it. She’s almost past the age where she can play babes; she’ll have to do it on the acting from here on out. Pringle sees that in her, and he can get it out. I’ll give him that. Yeah, there’s something between them; I think that’s why he put himself on the line with the studio over this part of hers. He almost doubled her pages. From what I hear, it paid off. I don’t hear much anymore. I’m a has-been. I was that before the disease was obvious. I was never all that much of an agent; she was the best thing I ever had or ever will, now, and I called in an awful lot of chips to get Pringle to let her test for this one. Once he did, she did the rest. The chemistry was there between them from the first. You could see the lightning hit. They were together all through the filming, hot and heavy. I was welcome on the set because of that, and that only. No, don’t protest, dollbaby, I know I’m done in the industry. I don’t care, really, except for her. I’m sick of it; it eats you alive. Makes you little. I’d have pulled out of it long ago except for her. The last thing I could do for her was to get her this interview with Billy Poythress. It was the last chip I had. The production office wouldn’t even tell me when the screening is, but she can find out when she’s up there. Poythress will know. After today there’s nothing much I can do for her except hold her hand and pray.”