Interlopers
Summer is losing its flavor. Like a skin-split peach that lies heavy in the hand, oozing sticky juice and smelling swampy, the dregs of summer need wrapping and tossing. Valerie is starting her third trimester. Humid air constricts her like plastic wrap she can’t remove.
“I want this baby out now.” She’s stretched out on the living room couch under the ceiling fan, a pillow supporting her bulk. She levers her bare legs up and down, chafing at the scratchy upholstered cushions she chose for the sleek Danish modern couch. “I sure didn’t choose this furniture for comfort, did I?”
“Baby isn’t ready and, no, you didn’t.”
“Sophie is working hard getting the nursery ready.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Have you noticed she hardly ever leaves the house anymore?”
“I’ve noticed that too. She told me in July that the studio was closing for a month, but that was over a month ago.”
“I can’t believe she’ll be happy working as a nanny. I will pay her, you know, but I still feel like I’m somehow taking advantage of her.”
“I agree. Not that you mean to take advantage of her, but that she needs to figure out her life. She seems to have gotten off track.” I’ve been thinking about this for over a month, trying to figure out what could have happened to send Sophie into the shell she seems to have grown overnight. I have no time to puzzle on it today. I push myself out of my chair and pat Valerie on the shoulder as I pass the couch. “I’m going over to Laura’s to see how her trip to Berkeley went. Can I get you anything before I leave?”
“Thanks Mom, no. Bring me home a juicy story.” Valerie wiggles her eyebrows in a salacious gesture, then turns onto her side and scrunches her pillow under her back. She looks like a beached elephant seal. Puffy ambles in from the atrium.
“Nooooo, Puffy,” Valerie looks at me helplessly as Puffy jumps up and tries to find a spot to cozy fifteen pounds of feline fur into.
“Have fun, you three.” I toss her a copy of American Baby and head off to pick up Laura.
We’ve decided to drive over Highway 17 to walk Goldie on the beach. By now, the beach-goers that snarl traffic all summer on this curvy road should be starting some serious back-to-school shopping. Two hours after I collect Laura and Goldie, we have our feet in the sand on the long stretch of Sunset Beach. Laura lets Goldie off her leash to frolic in the surf while we leave our footprints on the wet sand. We dodge clumps of seaweed, stopping to poke at sand crabs and stare off into the overcast sky at the pelicans that dip in the water and slurp up fish. Neptune’s school is out, releasing an easily replenished snack supply.
I have to prompt Laura to serve up the details of her weekend in Berkeley. I can’t tell by her manner if her relationship with Mike has a future, or if she’s just come to terms with how things are, the way I did for so many years.
Roger and I slow-danced around a permanent relationship for a decade. We told ourselves it was because of distance. Without thinking, we pitched our voices to dissonant chords and pursued separate melodies that led us to opposite coasts. Then, an invisible hand plucked a heartstring. Our dissonant lifestyles resolved themselves into harmony. But if the Lyricist is plucking any strings now, Mike isn’t listening.
“How did it go?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did you surprise him, or did you tell him you were coming?”
“I called him and told him straight out that I was coming to see him, and that I was planning on staying the weekend.
“Was he surprised? What did he say?”
“Surprised? No, not really. It was almost like he was prepared. The first thing he said was that he would make a reservation for me at the Claremont Hotel. Then he told me all the places he wanted to take me, all the things he wanted to show me, all the people he thought I’d be interested in meeting.”
“Wow, he sounds like my travel agent.”
“You have a travel agent?”
“Roger and I are thinking of taking a trip after the baby is born, to give Andy and Valerie some time alone to adjust to being parents. But that’s beside the point. It sounds like Mike was trying to avoid being alone with you. Was he?”
“That’s what it seemed like to me at first. But then...” Laura turns her head toward the high tide that rumbles in on August afternoons. The ocean fills our ears with the muffled roar of an Ancient who speaks guttural tongues we cannot discern, but that thrill us.
“But then?”
“After campus tours and visits to cafes and record shops and bookstores, we ended up sitting on a blanket on a grassy hill in Strawberry Park at sunset. We weren’t a priest and a widow; we were just two people like all the other crazy people in Berkeley.”
The wind is picking up. It flicks away the tear that trickles down her cheek. She sniffs hard and blinks into the briny blow. A bit of sun pops out to wink at us and skirt behind the next cloud. She turns to look at me and starts to laugh. Her laughter sounds like freedom.
R
The phone is ringing in the kitchen as I walk through the atrium toward the family room. I go to answer it before I notice that Valerie is rooting around in the pantry, well within reach of the phone.
“Don’t answer it.” Valerie walks out of the pantry, balancing cans of tomatoes sauce and paste. “It’s been ringing like that all day. When I pick it up, I hear breathing and then someone hangs up.”
“Who would do that?”
“I don’t know. Kids, probably.”
“All day?”
“I don’t know, Mom. I’m trying to ignore it. It’s very annoying.” Valerie starts banging pots around that are wedged together in the cabinets.
“Where is everyone?”
“I never know where the boys are. Probably the garage. Sophie is cleaning windows. Roger and Andy are outside inspecting the grounds.” Valerie rolls her eyes.
“What are they looking for?”
She stands at the counter, looking from the can opener she holds in one hand to the large stainless steel spoon she holds in the other. She seems surprised to find her hands full. Setting both implements down, she puts her hands on her hips.
“Well, let me tell you about that. Carlo took it upon himself to start hacking on our Italian plum tree that hangs one little branch over into his yard.”
“That tree shouldn’t be pruned until February!”
“He didn’t prune it, Mom, he attacked and murdered it. He took a chainsaw to it. After he whacked off the branch that had grown over on his side, he leaned over on his ladder and topped the whole tree. In the process, he dropped his chain saw over the hedge into our yard. He says that when he came around to get it, he found a bunch of trash stashed under the hedge. He had the nerve to come to the door and tell me he found evidence that someone has been camping down there behind the trees.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“He wouldn’t tell me. All he would say was, tell the men to go down there and look.”
I walk through the living room and poke my head out the patio door. In the distance, a patch of sky shows where the stately old Italian plum used to spread its limbs. Now that the tree has been laid bare to the sunlight, it stands naked and ashamed. Where once its limbs arced to the ground heavy with fruit they now stick out like amputated stumps. Branches lay in a tangle at the base of tree. Andy and Roger approach the house, stomping dirt off their feet as they come up the walkway. Roger looks up at me, shaking his head.
“That’s a hell of a mess we’ve got down there.”
“It’s not our mess, it’s Carlo’s. Let him clean it up!”
Roger ignores my comment. “I think Carlo’s right. It looks like someone has been camping down there in the fruit trees. When we let it get overgrown like that, it created a perfect environment for someone to erect a little lean-to.”
“Are you taking Carlo’s side in this? He’s probably killed that tree.”
Andy puts his hands on my shoulders. “It’s okay, Mom. We’ll get Carlo over here to haul off the limbs he cut off the tree. He did a hatchet job, that’s for sure, but I don’t think he’ll charge us for his time.”
“You think this is funny?”
“No, of course not. But I don’t think he meant to go as far as he did. I’ve used chain saws. I know that once you have it revved up and moving smoothly through wood, it’s hard to know when to stop.”
“That’s easy, Andy. He should have stopped on his side of the hedge.” I look over at Roger, who knows when to stop talking. He just stands behind Andy like he’s waiting for Andy to figure out that he’s digging himself into a hole.
“I will have a conversation with Carlo about boundaries. I think our bigger concern right now is figuring out who has moved in with us.”
R
We ask Detective Ramos to come and check out the campsite we found, not in any official capacity but just so we will have some idea of what we are dealing with. In the Thirties, hobos used to come up from the creek and beg for food. No one felt threatened. They made the ragged men sandwiches and sent them on their way. But this is the Sixties; it’s a different world. We have no easy explanation for a hastily made shelter on our property.
We are a people looking over our shoulders at threats we never thought could possibly make their way to our shores, much less our backyards. When a chicken set out to defrost went missing, my mother’s generation blamed the hobos, those sad men burned out of their nests by a bad economy. When our peace is disturbed, we blame the kids, thoughtless young people who pitch their tents where they have no right to be.
As I suspected, Manny tells us it is probably kids coming up from the creek looking for a place to drink beer or smoke pot. I don’t know. Rigging and stocking a shelter sounds a bit more permanent than Huck Finn and Joe making a pit stop on a life journey. Manny didn’t disagree that the binoculars we found stashed under the hedge might indicate that whoever had been here had interests that went beyond getting high but he asked us not to jump to conclusions.
Suspicious as I am, I have to agree that it is ridiculous to think that Carlo, who is not above spying on Sophie through the hedge when she is sunbathing, would wedge his skinny old self between the tree and the hedge at night and train a pair of high-powered binoculars on her window. The detective is probably right. It’s probably kids.