Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

“How do you know he’s not there?” I said.

She dropped her eyes again.

“He called me the other night,” she said. “He was going into the hospital, and he wanted to talk to you about Aunt Laura. He said he’d tried to call you up at T.C.’s, but nobody returned his message. I asked him and he said he’d be very pleased if we’d stay at his place and try to get ahold of Aunt Laura.”

“Why didn’t you call me and tell me that?” I said slowly and clearly. “Why didn’t you, Glynn?”

“I was afraid you’d make me go home, all right? I was afraid you’d find out something had happened to her and we couldn’t stay.”

She was shouting, her eyes screwed shut with anger and desperation.

“That was a very terrible thing you did,” I said evenly. “It was truly an awful thing. I hope you never realize how awful. What hospital is he in?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

“And you didn’t ask?”

“ No! I didn’t ask! So what does that make me, a monster? Okay, then! I didn’t ask and I’m a monster !”

“You’re not anybody I know,” I said softly, in misery.

She came surging off the bed and ran up into my face.

“Do you think I know who you are? You aren’t my mother; you aren’t that awful saintly shit who keeps telling me what the right thing to do is, who keeps falling all over me to keep me a baby, who always, always knows the good, kind, wise, saintly thing to do.”

“I’ve never on earth tried to tell you what was right,” I whispered. “I’ve never told you how to live your life—”

“No, but you’re always done the goddamn right thing! Always, always ! You’ve always been oh, so dutiful and good and pure; you’ve always taken care of everybody; you’ve always showed me what to do even if you didn’t tell me! And I’ve always tried to do it, and it doesn’t work; it doesn’t get you anywhere; that fucking old woman still runs our house; I can’t take the one good thing somebody’s offered me that was all mine alone; you’re always there with goodness shining out of you—”

“Glynn—”

“I want you to get out of my head! I’m not you! I’m me! You’re not anybody anymore; you’re just some cat in heat who’s up here fucking the hired help.”

“What the hell are you saying? How can you say such a thing?”

“ I can smell it on you !” she screamed, and began to cry, hard and loudly, like a child. “ I could smell it on you when I got in the car! Do you think I’m a baby? You think I don’t know what come smells like ?”

She whirled and ran back to the bed and threw herself down onto it, her face buried in Curtis’s neck. She cried loudly. Curtis whined and nosed at her and licked her face. I put a hand out toward her, and then dropped it.

“I’m going up and try to get hold of Aunt Laura one more time,” I said tonelessly. “And I’m going to make us a plane reservation. I’ll be back after a while. Try to sleep. We’ll see if we can start to sort all this out in the morning. I’m sorry you feel badly. I feel badly, too.”

She did not answer, only lay there sobbing. I went out of her room and closed the door. I did not think that the part of me her words had hit would ever come alive again.

“ I will starve myself !” she screamed after me through the closed door. “Starting right now! At least you can’t stop me doing that!”

Then do it, I said, but not aloud. I can’t be your reason to live. You have to find that.

I went out into the hot night and up the gravel path to T.C.

Much later we sat upon the sofa on his veranda and looked at each other. We had not made love; we had wanted to, and started it, but then we had known that after all, we could not, and neither of us had pushed it.

“Not after that business with Glynn,” he said. “I don’t want you remembering that when you remember how we were together. Remember the last time instead. Remember letting the stew burn, and you sitting on top of me, laughing like a hyena.”

I had told him about the scene with Glynn. I kept nothing back. He’d listened without comment, and then said, “Poor you. Poor Glynn. You’ve started down that awful road of her growing up. I remember some of it from Katie, before I left. My grandmother used to call it starting up fool’s hill. I wish I could help you with it, but that’s for you and Pom to do.”

He spoke freely and naturally of Pom. I knew that I could not have.

We were holding each other tightly on the sofa. We had lain there together for what seemed a very long time, kissing very gently now and then, but mostly just holding each other. He had broken it off to try Laura for me, at the Palm Springs house and at Stuart Feinstein’s condo, but there was no answer anywhere, and I had no idea how to reach Caleb Pringle. T.C. had called the number Caleb had given him long ago first thing and gotten only an answering machine, and I knew that it was fruitless to try and reach Leonard Margolies. Finally he had called and made a reservation for Glynn and me on the Delta noon flight the next day. We had had to take first class; tourist was full.

“Good,” he said. “Drink champagne. Eat steak. Stretch out and sleep. Soften the princess up with macadamia nuts and maybe get her a little drunk. And then tell her very firmly to shut up; she knows nothing about love. She’ll be lucky if she ever does. Don’t be a doormat for a spoiled mall punk. Don’t be a doormat for anybody.”

“She’s not that.”

“I know. I remember her when she first got here. But you mustn’t let her start that way. On the other hand, maybe you should. Maybe now’s the time to start letting her make her own mistakes. Do you think you could find it in you to let her do this movie? If you or somebody you trusted came along to look out for her? Maybe it would do her dad good to do that—”

“No,” I said. “He couldn’t. He couldn’t if he wanted to. I see now that I have to let up, but I’m not prepared to let her go in harm’s way. I haven’t changed that much, T.C. I don’t think I ever will.”

“No. That part of you won’t change,” he said.

We lay there a while longer. The thin moon rode up the sky and diminished; it had risen a great orange crescent, apocalyptic and awful. I was glad when it shrank. The light it spilled down on us on the veranda sofa was thin and urine-pale, not the radiant cold silver it had been before. We were stuck together with perspiration, but neither of us moved.

“I won’t see you again, will I?” I whispered at last, tasting the salt of his skin on my tongue, against his chest. “I mean, I know you’ll take us to the airport, but I mean…see you.”

“You’ll see me,” he said. His voice was very low. “Whenever you see redwoods in the National Geographic , or fog, or watch Shamu on TV, you’ll be seeing me. Whenever you smell pine and spruce and day-old socks, that’s me. Whenever you hear wind in the tops of trees, that’s me, and whenever you taste crab and wine and Brie that’s me, and whenever the wind blows your hat off or you get under a cold shower, that’s me. Whenever you read about an earthquake, that’s me, sure as gun’s iron. Whenever you smell wet dog, that’s Curtis and me, and whenever you see a Rattus rattus , that’s Forrest, and I’m right behind him. Never see me again? You’ll never not see me. And I’ll never not see you. I’ve got you whole and real, just like you’ve been these last few days, in my brain and heart and the part of me you profess to want to make a life cast of. As long as I live, the Merritt of Merritt’s Creek does, too. Didn’t I say I’d always be your same stars? If you get to missing me, just look up.”