Gift of the Golden Mountain (7 page)

     May interrupted, "I think Hayes probably knows that, otherwise he wouldn't have put up with it—"

     "Which was lost on Sam . . ." Karin added.

     "Which was lost on Sam," May agreed, "but we were talking about Hayes. How could you not like someone who quotes
Tristram Shandy
? For a minute there I had this feeling that it was some kind of a sign—that he was meant to be connected to us. Do you think we should consider him for our Inner Circle?"

     Karin laughed. "What Inner Circle?"

     "We could make one, couldn't we?" May came back with mock exasperation.

     "Does it bother you that he's a political activist?"

     "Bother? You mean because of my father? No. I hated what they did to my father, but I always knew he was right. And I loved him for standing up to them, for 'shouting into the wind' as he called it."

     The morning's tension was gone now, so May could say, "You know Sam could become a royal pain, don't you?"

     "I do," Karin answered seriously. "Maybe it would be better to let someone else have the cottage. He can be so sweet, you know . . . and I like it that he doesn't come on to either of us, and how easy and helpful he is, like getting up to help with the cooking, things like that. I guess I just felt so grateful to him, and he seems so badly to want to be friends with us . . ."

     "I understand that," May said, "I really do. And though I have some doubts, I'm willing to take a chance if you think . . ."

     "Please don't leave it to me," Karin interrupted. "In fact, I would rather the decision be yours—either way will be fine with me."

     "Why should I make the decision?" May said, feeling herself stumbling into the kind of thicket of meanings, the cloudy mass of innuendo that always exasperated her. "Is it because I'm paying, or is it so I can't say 'I told you so'?"

     "No," Karin said, clearly smarting, but not allowing the anger to surface, "neither. It's because I have some real questions about Sam myself, I don't know if I want him in so close. But I also know how kind he can be, when he isn't being defensive or trying to impress you. It's strange, but for a while there when I thought Hayes might share the cottage—well, I would have felt better about that. But Sam alone, I don't know."

     May nodded, and touched her lightly on the shoulder to show she was sorry, and Karin smiled to show it was all right.

     "I've got to walk over to the campus to turn in my admission forms. Let me think about it," May said.

She walked briskly down the hill, breathing in the sharp medicinal scent of eucalyptus. A scattering of small, prickly leaves rustled in the gutters. Through a break in the houses she glimpsed the San Francisco skyline, shimmering in the autumn light. She remembered a fund-raising party for her father; it might have been held near here. The house had a wonderful big garden with a view of the whole sweep of the Bay. That had been one of the nice times. Dad in the center of things, among admirers, surrounded by people who listened, who hung on to his every word, who told her how proud she must be of her father.

     The memory caused her to smile at a boy with long hair who was struggling up the hill on a bicycle.

     "Long way home," he said.

     "Long way home," she agreed, laughing.

An hour later, her errands run, she made her way back up the hill, past student housing where blankets were hanging out of windows, up the steep winding curve of La Loma, walking slowly now because she could feel the muscles pulling on the backs of her legs.

     Halfway up the hill she ran out of breath and sat on a low retaining wall to rest. Behind her, the hills were filled with evergreens and ivy and various bright ground covers planted to grab hold of the earth, to keep it from sliding away. She sat there for a time, not thinking, and then she knew that it had been right to come back. She knew because she was thinking about her father, remembering, and it didn't hurt, the tight feeling was no longer in her chest. She had talked about him easily this morning, had told Karin more than she had told anyone, had said out loud words she had hardly been able to think. It was coming back to her. She had been afraid of it, but it was coming back.
Look the son of a bitch in the eye.
She was not afraid.

She saw Sam working even before she got to the house. He had taken off his shirt in the heat and the muscles of his shoulders stood out, hard and slick and shining with sweat. He had the look of a sculpted bronze figure, in graceful efficient motion. He was pruning an overgrown rhododendron, reaching high, concentrating. She watched his muscles flex in a kind of wonderful rhythm.

     "What are you doing?" she called out to him.

     He turned, and for an instant his dark eyes registered alarm, so she knew she had taken him by surprise.

     "I thought I'd get this pruned before you hired somebody who would come in and butcher it. It's a great old rhoddie, but it's gotten out of hand."

     "You certainly look like you know what you're doing," she said.

     Without turning around, he answered, "I do. My pop's a gardener and I've put in my time." She heard the edge of anger in his voice, but decided to ignore it.

     "Sam," she said, "I have a proposition for you."

     He raised his eyebrows suggestively, and she discovered that the eyes that could burn could also shine with fun. "My mother always told me that if I waited long enough, this fairy princess in a frog suit would come along and kiss me . . . Where's your frog suit?"

     She laughed, at ease with him for the first time. "Well listen, I mean, gee gosh . . ." She pretended to stumble. He laughed too, balancing on the ladder, his body lithe and alive. This was Karin's Sam: easy, likeable, eager. Suddenly, the decision seemed simple.

     "My proposition is—you can have the cottage rent-free if you'll take care of the grounds and be a sort of 'handy man' around the place," she said.

     Deliberately, he turned back to his chore and made a few cuts before he said, "It isn't enough."

     She watched the muscles move as he continued clipping, and she had a sudden urge to pull the ladder out from under him, to see if that beautiful tight body would be so graceful flying through the air. Anger rose in her throat; she could feel her face grow hot. "What do you think would be 'enough'?" she asked, forcing her voice to go cold. She would hear him out before she told him to go to hell.

     "The rains start next month," he said, "and there'll be very little yard work then. As for a handy man, this house is in such good shape it won't require more than an occasional lightbulb to change, or a toilet to unplug. I wouldn't be doing enough to earn my keep."

     He had been clipping all the while, but now he stopped and looked at her. "I could help with the housework. Do all the vacuuming, maybe, and the floor scrubbing—the heavy stuff. I know how. If you want, I could do the grocery shopping." All of this had
been said in a soft, measured voice with only the slightest rasp on the edges. Then, as if he couldn't help himself, he added, "You could think of me as your Japanese houseboy."

     She held his eyes for a long moment. He didn't back off. "Okay," she finally said, calling his bluff, "I'll talk to Karin and we'll decide what would work out best."

     Sam returned to his clipping, leaving her to watch the muscles of his back, straining as he pulled at the branches, glistening as if oiled by sweat. She felt as if she could see how hard it was for him, how terribly much he wanted, needed; the struggle within was written there in the tight muscle coil of his back.

THEY ARRIVED TOGETHER, May and Karin and Sam, bumping and jostling, laughing and joking. Sam opened his arms to me in an expansive gesture. "Faith," he said dramatically, just as Karin slipped between us to warn, half in earnest, "we told him he could come if he promised to behave."

     "You certainly look as if you're dressed to behave," I said, admiring his perfectly pressed slacks, tattersall shirt, and tweed jacket. The girls were in jeans and sweatshirts.

     "Mr. Ivy League West here," May jibed as she headed for the kitchen, "aims to impress."

     "Impress whom?" I laughed, "these are pretty casual affairs."

     "I'm never casual about affairs," Sam joked.

     Ignoring him, May called back, "Kit. He finally gets to meet the illustrious Mrs. McCord."

     Every other Friday evening, May and Karin and Kit would come to my cottage for cracked crab and sourdough bread, salad, and wine: During crab season the menu never varied, but the guest list always did. Others were invited to liven the conversation—
some of the young photographers who had discovered the work I had done in the twenties and thirties, and had found their way to my door, or people May and Karin had met at the University.

     It was an exciting time, those weeks and months that led from the summer of 1967 through the first of the year, but it was a fearful time as well. The ghettos of Newark and Detroit burst into flame during that long, hot summer, even while the young of the land made their way to San Francisco for what was called "a summer of love." The girls in flowing paisley dresses and the boys with flowers in their long hair scattered over Golden Gate Park and the nearby Haight-Ashbury district in a haze of marijuana and incense. The hippies added the only gentle note that fall and winter. A Stop-the-Draft week demonstration in Oakland had erupted in violence, with police spraying marchers with chemical Mace and arresting hundreds. In San Francisco and in Boston and in Washington, D.C., the growing groundswell of opposition to the war in Vietnam could be measured by the hundreds of thousands who turned out for antiwar marches. At the Pentagon, the clash between marchers and police ended in mass arrests. Closer to home, the Black Panthers brandished their weapons in the California state capitol to make their point about "black power."

     The talk at my get-togethers was spirited, to say the least. May teasingly referred to them as "Faith's Fortnightly Salon." What she didn't seem to know was that they were my way of bringing her private world into some kind of balance with Kit's, that it was an attempt to bring them together.

     In the five months since May's return, she had stubbornly resisted most of Kit's overtures. At first May was polite, making up excuses that sounded plausible. Kit knew they were excuses, but she persevered until May stopped making excuses. When Kit became aware of the struggle she was causing between Karin and May, she saw the girls, only at my cottage.

     The air seemed to constrict when Kit approached May. Karin did her best to ease the tension and so did I, and it took all of our
energy. Still, I was convinced that if we kept at it, if May and Kit were brought together often enough, something would happen to shake May, to bring her to her senses.

     What did it mean,
to her senses
? I did not know. I did not know how my view of Kit could be so different from May's. I did not understand how—or why—May had lost faith in a woman who was devoted to her completely, who was prepared to love her without conditions.