Acts of God (11 page)

These were pictures of a family I'd never seen before. Older people, younger people gathering around laughing, eating. Toasting, glasses raised. These were pictures that could matter only to those whom they concerned—and clearly they were not mine. Since I had not had my ticket when I went to get my pictures and had just given the clerk my name, I reasoned that there must be another family named Winterstone who lived in the area. And they had recorded every moment of their move into a rather shabby, not very interesting apartment.

Quickly I put the photos away. When I had to return to work, I looked at Bruno, still sitting there in the breakfast nook. “Bruno,” I said, “I have to go now, but if you would like to come here from time to time, if it will somehow help you to write your dissertation by sitting there, then please feel free.” Even as I invited him, I wondered what I was doing. What had gotten into me, letting this boy into my house?

“Oh, Mrs. Winterstone … Tess, I can't tell you how much it helps. To experience what he experienced. To be here in his home. Listen to this unfinished poem. It is called ‘Indigenous to Growing Up' and we only have fragments of it: ‘Beneath one dark, soft covering of pine, the hunchback tree stands, its arms sloping like old-fashioned leaves … In spring when it rained we lay beneath those branches; touching the places where it curved.' Do you have any idea where that hunchback tree might be?”

“I'm afraid I don't. Bruno, this is fascinating. It really is very interesting, but I'm afraid I have to go back to work.” In truth he was making me uncomfortable and I was annoyed that I had been given those photographs that belonged to someone else. I was anxious to leave. I was afraid that I'd already opened the door too much for him and that he would be here all the time.

I walked with him outside, taking a deep breath. Checking to make sure I had the keys to the seashell house because I had a couple who were very keen on seeing it, I waved good-bye to Bruno. “Come back soon,” I said, fearing he would.

“I will,” he said. “I definitely will.”

On my way to the appointment I stopped at the photo store, where I explained to the clerk what had happened. He was grateful that I had returned because, he said, the other Winterstones had been looking for their film. They were very upset, he told me, that he had given someone else their film.

Now he gave me my pictures of the reunion, none of which came out very well. I leafed through them, but most were very dark and everyone had red eyes like rabbits when you catch them in your headlights late at night. In one I saw a person who was clearly Margaret, waving from the back of the crowd.

12

For months after he stopped
coming into my room, I still stayed up at night, waiting for my father to tuck me in. I'd sit up, listening for the 9:47 to go through. It was the last train I'd hear before I had to go to sleep. But even after I heard its mournful whistle disappearing in the night, it was still difficult for me to sleep.

One night when it was raining, I heard the train whistle, but I stayed awake, listening to the rain on the roof outside my window. It sounded like small animals running across the shingles. I could hear the TV on in my parents' room and I thought of asking someone to tuck me in. Instead I lay awake, a Nancy Drew mystery open in my lap.

Then it seemed as if the storm had picked up. I heard what sounded like hail at my window. Maybe the storm had turned ugly, though I was pretty sure it couldn't be hail because it was April and it never hailed in April, except once that I could recall, and then Illinois was declared a disaster area because the hail did so much damage, keeping my father busy with claims for the next six months.

I was drifting off with the book open, when the sound of something fiercer than hail woke me. I was past believing in monsters trying to get in, but something was being hurled against my window. Opening the window, I gazed down below. The breeze blew hard. The branches of the maples beat against the side of the house. But in fact it was pebbles, stones from our driveway that were making the sound. I could barely make out a hand waving at me in the rain. “Tess,” a voice called. “Come outside. It's me, Margaret.”

I could just make her out down there in a wet T-shirt, hair dripping wet. “What are you doing?” I shouted, for even I knew that it was crazy for a ten-year-old girl who lived on the other side of the tracks to be at my house at this hour in bad weather.

“Come down,” she called. “Slide down the drainpipe.”

It had never occurred to me that I could do this, and now it came as a kind of revelation. My bedroom was just above the eaves to the kitchen, and in fact it wasn't much of a drop. But I refused. “Go home,” I told her. “You'll get sick.”

“Come down,” she called again. She was spinning in circles on the lawn, her head tilted back, drinking in the rain. I tore the jumbo rollers out of my hair and took off my pajamas and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Then I slid down the drainpipe. I was stunned at how easy it was to slip out and escape from my life. Though up until then I hadn't felt the need to.

“Look,” she said, holding out her arms. She began to spin again, her ponytail swinging around. She was laughing, head back, mouth open, the rain pouring off her face. I spun with her. I tilted my head back in the wind and the rain and just like Margaret, I spun. It was more fun than I imagined it would be.

Then she stopped suddenly. Taking my hand, she put it on my chest so I could feel my heart throb. “Feel that,” she said. “When I was very little,” she said, “my father told me I had a time bomb in my chest. He said I had to be careful or it would explode. For years I was afraid to run.”

Weird girl. I thought that this was a funny thing for a father to tell his daughter. “Why would he tell you that?” I asked.

“Oh,” she dropped my hand, “he always told me strange things like that. You know, my real name isn't even Blair.”

“It isn't?” I asked, incredulous.

“No, it's De la Concha. Margarita de la Concha. My father is Spanish. Margaret of the Shell; that's my name. Beautiful, isn't it?” She tossed back her head of shimmering black hair, threw her hand over her head, and gave a little “olé.” Then she laughed so that her white teeth shone. She made them clatter together like castanets. “Beautiful?”

I nodded, laughing with her, and we did a little flamenco dance in the driving rain. “Yes,” I told her, “it is a beautiful name.” And I thought it was. Certainly better than Theadora Antonia Winterstone.

We snuck onto the screened-in porch and I brought down some old beach towels that we hardly ever used so my mother wouldn't notice if they weren't in the linen closet. Margaret and I huddled in the towels. I suddenly felt bad that I hadn't invited her to my birthday party but my dad said I could only have ten kids, and of course the first ten I invited were the gang, so that was that. But now I thought for the first time that Margaret was nice. Strange, but nice. Though I didn't really want to, I found myself liking her.

Margaret said she was hungry so I went and got us something to eat. I tiptoed through the kitchen, carefully opening cabinets, and returned with Cokes, a bag of chips, some cookies. When I returned with the food, I found her cold, shivering, really, her teeth chattering away and her lips turning blue. So I went back inside and grabbed a blanket off my bed and my Chicago Cubs T-shirt. She wrapped herself in the blanket and dried her wet hair with one of the towels. Water flew off her head. Even in the dark her eyes were so white and black. As she peeled off her wet shirt, I saw that her breasts were small and dark. She slipped the Cubs shirt quickly over her head.

My mother hadn't taken the plastic covers off the summer furniture yet. As we sat on top of the plastic, our bare legs stuck to the covers and made farting noises when we moved. This sent us into such paroxysms of laughter we had to stuff the towel into our mouths so that my parents didn't hear us.

“This is a nice house,” Margaret said after a while, looking around. “We used to live in a nice house, even nicer than this.”

I was a little hurt by her saying she lived in a nicer house than we did and part of me didn't quite believe her, but I didn't think she'd make something up after we'd spun around in the rain and all. “Oh, really,” I said. “Where?”

“In Wisconsin. It was a big white house by a lake like the one the Schoenfields live in. My father, he's a very successful businessman. He runs a valve factory.”

“Valves?”

“Oh, yes, you know, pipes. They regulate the flow of things.”

From science I knew that the heart had valves, but I couldn't quite envision manufacturing them. Still, it sounded plausible that Margaret had a father who did this for a living and did it well. “Your parents are divorced?”

Margaret ignored my question. “We've just hit a bad patch,” she said. I remember her saying “bad patch” because it didn't sound like something a girl our age would say. In fact, nothing she said struck me as something a girl our age would say, and something about her seemed as if she were already grown up. “I'll live in a nice house again,” she said. “You'll see. I'll live in a big white house by the lake.” She said this in a way that made me think she would.

“Yes, Margaret,” I said, “I believe you will.”

“We're so much alike,” Margaret said. “Let's be real friends. Friends for life.” She said it in an insistent way that made me uneasy, as if I had no choice. “Here,” she said, “You can have my locket.” It was a small gold heart on a chain, the kind you can buy at Woolworth's for a few dollars. She slipped it off her neck and onto mine.

Then she asked if she could have something of mine, a keepsake, as if we were sealing a pact. “I won't keep it,” she said. “Just let me have it for a little while.” I offered her my Chicago Cubs T-shirt, which she was already wearing, but that wasn't a keepsake, she told me. “A keepsake is something you always want to keep with you.”

I thought about this for a while, then offered her the scarlet rabbit's foot Jeb had given me the Christmas before. I took it with me everywhere—piano recitals, exams, football games. “Okay,” I told her, “you can have this, but you have to promise to give it back.” We made a thumb-touch-pinky-twist swear.

That night as we sat huddled on my porch, I felt good about giving her something that mattered to me. After we made our little exchange, I said I was getting sleepy and Margaret said she'd get going.

“Going where? How're you going to get home?” I wanted to wake my father to give her a ride, but she grew adamant.

“Oh, no,” she said, “I know the way. It doesn't take that long.”

“But it's at least two miles and it's raining.” I thought of how far she had to go. Past the police station, the library, through the downtown, along Sheridan Road, under the railroad trestle, then into Prairie Vista. Maybe an hour on foot.

“No,” she said, firmly, “I'll be fine.”

The porch door banged and she disappeared into the night. I could only see her shadow receding as she walked down our driveway and vanished in the rain.

13

Fisherman's Wharf is my least
favorite place to meet someone in San Francisco. I can't stand all the ticky-tacky shops selling T-shirts and caramel corn and the left-hand shop that sells all kinds of scissors and stuff for people who are left-handed. I can't stand the sea lions that live on the docks and have been turned into a tourist attraction.

I've been having this fight for years with the people at the wharf, who claim they don't feed the sea lions to make them stay, but how do you explain a few hundred sea lions hanging out right there on the docks? So when Nick Schoenfield called to say he was in town for business and asked me to meet him at Fisherman's Wharf at such-and-such a time the following Tuesday, I wanted to say no, but then I thought, Tourists, what do they know?

He said to meet him at that seafood restaurant that overlooks the bay and serves dishes like lobster Newburg. Nick was already sitting at a table by the window when I arrived and he waved at me as I came in. He wore an open shirt and jacket and had a breezy way about him I'd always liked. When he stood up to greet me, he was large, looming.

“Tessie,” he said, opening his arms. Bending down, he gave me a hug. Then he laughed his big laugh as if my arrival came as a complete surprise. Nick was the kind of person you'd ask to open a jar or unlock a door because he made it seem as if he could do anything. Solve any problem you might have. He was such an easy-going person that he appeared to be almost shallow, as if he couldn't feel very much for very long. But I'd never thought that was the case. Though I'd heard his life had not been an easy one with his father and now his difficult wife, he seemed like someone capable of happiness.

“I'm glad you could meet me.”

“Oh, I wanted to. It was no problem,” I said, easing my way into the booth. In fact it was a long ride and I'd never been fond of the Wharf, but I didn't want him to know. On the piers sea lions honked. The waiter spilled water on the table as he filled our glasses. Nonchalantly Nick dabbed at it with his napkin.

“I love it here,” Nick said. “You're lucky, living at the edge of America.” He took a deep breath as if he couldn't get enough air. “I get landlocked back home.” I found this a strange comment coming from him since he lived in his father's old house at the end of Laurel with a giant picture window that took in the entire lake.

“My house is on the ocean,” I told him. “It's not much to look at, though I bought it from a famous poet's son. You'll have to come see it sometime.”

He nodded, taking this all in. “I'm always interested in the sons of famous people,” he quipped. “What's the poet's name?”