34
Disconnect
Opal lived alone in the cottage now. Earlier in the week, Leone had asked her how she was getting by.
“Social Security. Plus a small income from a few private dance students helps put food on the table.”
“You’re still teaching?”
“That surprises you?”
“I don’t know. I figured that Jane would take care of you.”
“Is that where you think the money I send you comes from? Jane?”
What to say? She could not recall a moment when she thought about it at all. She remembered nothing of the blackness that rolled over her, invited by too much booze and too many regrets. In her lucid periods, she attended only to those sensations that carried her from one moment to the next, the smell of a freshly shampooed pup, the featherweight feel of a shell picked off the beach, what else? So little satisfied. It was a mistake to come here.
Opal was still talking. “And a part-time job as a companion puts gas in the car; I don’t need anything else.”
“A companion?” Leone had never considered that her mother might have anyone in her life besides family and a few neighbors. “Who?”
“I make lunch for an old gentleman whose family needs someone to keep an eye on him. After lunch, we play cards and watch the early news on the television.” Opal threw Leone a knowing look. “Then I go home.”
“Sounds pretty chummy.”
“Yes, well, he did ask me to marry him, but I suspect what he really wants is an unpaid nurse not a wife. Besides, I will never marry again.”
“I should hope not. What are his kids worried about, anyway?”
“Sometimes he gets it in his head to pick up his shotgun, go outside, and shoot it down the gopher holes on the front lawn.” Opal laughed. “If he should miss and shoot himself in the foot, my job is to notify the family.”
They had a good laugh, and then Leone asked, “What does Jane think of this arrangement?”
“Oh she likes him. She has us both over on Christmas morning. He brings presents for the girls.”
A familiar pain had flashed in Leone’s chest. “How cozy.” The words escaped before she could strangle her naked resentment. I’ve never had an invitation to Jane’s house. I had to invite myself.
Today would be different. Today Leone walked into the cottage with Christine as a shield. Once inside, her husky baritone voice filled the room. “Mother? I’ve got Christine with me for the weekend.” She shooed Christine. “Get busy with something for awhile. We’ll go shopping a little later.” Then she dropped the girl’s suitcase in the living room.
Opal appeared in the kitchen doorway. “I bought you a couple of comic books and a Mars bar,” she told Christine. Opal pointed to the kitchen table, where the groceries still sat in bags. Christine retrieved her goodies and started to pull out a chair, but Opal put a gentle hand on the girl’s shoulder and guided her through the back door. Why don’t you go out back for a little while? I’ll call you when we are ready to go.” Then she turned to Leone.
“Why did you bring her here?”
Leone pressed her lips together in puzzled bemusement and shook her head. “I thought you and Jane would like it if I showed an interest.”
“Oh, Leone. Do you feel an interest?” Opal began to unpack her groceries and put them away.
“I feel like a drink. Do you have any beer?”
“No.”
The back door squeaked open and nails clicked on the worn linoleum floor. “Scochie wants to come in.” Christine’s voice came through the door.
The door slammed shut, and a Chihuahua scuttled into view. Spotting a stranger in the kitchen, Scochie squatted on her haunches and peed. Leone dropped down to sit on her ankles and held out the back of her hand. The little dog trembled, sniffed the air, and inched forward on dancing feet. Leone crooned, and the dog swooned, rolling onto her back. Leone massaged the dog’s tummy with gentle fingertips, causing the dog’s eyes to roll back in her head and her leg to tic like the second hand on a clock when it gets stuck.
Opal handed Leone a paper towel to wipe up the mess the dog had made.
“Dogs like me.” Leone blotted the puddle with the towel. Scochie jumped to her feet and shook her hindquarters in appreciation. “I don’t know anything about kids. It was probably stupid of me to agree to take her.”
“Jane asked you to take her?” Opal unwrapped the cold cuts and began to spread mayonnaise on slices of bread.
“The other kid is sick. This one is better off here, don’t you think?”
“I love having her here.”
Leone stood and watched Christine from the window. The girl sat on a swing seat, knees pressed together, head bent over a Betty and Veronica comic, pulling her fingers through her ponytail. “That’s good,” Leone said. “We’ll have a nice visit. You can watch her tonight, okay?”
“Where are you going?”
“To the city. Can I borrow your car?”
“I’d really rather you didn’t. Opal set a plate of sandwiches on the table and poured milk into three glasses. “Why didn’t you drive your car up from the coast?”
Leone pulled in her chin and silently mouthed, milk Then she scowled. “My car is on the fritz. What is this, the third degree? Never mind. I can call a friend.”
The screen door squealed again. “Is lunch ready yet? I’m hungry.” Christine stayed out of sight.
“Come on in,” Opal said. “Lunch is on the table.”
So motherly. Without alcohol to dull annoyance, Leone fought the demon of discontent. The girl came in and sat down, pulling one leg up underneath her. She set about pulling her sandwich apart to inspect the cheese. Leone left her sandwich untouched. She stared at Christine, her mind clicking like a slide projector. An old slide dropped into view, her teenage self seated at the table with her grandmother, mother, and Jane. She searched the image for motherliness.
Sit up straight. Don’t play with your food. Nellie’s voice.
You never play with me. Jane’s voice.
Where was her mother’s voice? She struggled to hear it. Leone examined the faces that floated before her; a matriarch’s displeasure, a mite’s dissatisfaction, and between them, a mother’s patient forbearance.
A soft feather of sound brushed past her ear. It took her back to her beach-combing childhood when she sought protection from buffeting winds by leaning against her mother’s body. Not a soft body to pillow into, it was more like a strong gate you could swing on, a gate that never unhinged under your weight, never locked you out. But when her sister was born, she saw that the love that drew her in and spoke words of comfort was indiscriminate. Not special, not just for her, it was offered to all. She shut down her mental projector, picked up her plate and her milk glass, and took them to the sink.
“I’m sorry; I can’t eat this.” The plate clattered in the sink. Milk poured down the drain.
Opal looked up from where she sat next to Christine. “Can I fix you something else?”
“No, no. I’m just not hungry. I’m going outside for a smoke.” Leone forced a smile. “When I come back in, let’s play a game of canasta, shall we?” She patted Christine’s head, and as she passed by, Opal reached for Leone’s hand.
It had been years since she had allowed a touch from her mother. Inwardly, she recoiled, but she let Opal squeeze her hand. The warm flesh of her mother’s palm was soft as butter, but the strength in the fingers that closed around hers was surprisingly powerful. The grasp was firm, but not bruising; quick, but not abrupt. Opal dropped Leone’s hand before she could pull away.
R
They played canasta at the kitchen table in this house that held no history for Leone. Being an uneven number of people, they drew and discarded and melded their cards individually. Christine had an irritating way of snickering when she was ahead. Anything but pokerfaced, she would knit her eyebrows together and purse her lips for long minutes before she laid down her cards and slapped the table with glee. As Opal gathered the cards to deal another round, Christine turned to Leone.
“Nana told me you used to be a dancer and a writer. Did you ever write a book?”
“That was a long time ago.” Leone scraped her chair back from the table, stood up, and left the kitchen. In the bathroom, she leaned her head against the thin wall and listened to the muffled conversation taking place at the stove on the other side of the wall but inches from the toilet. A spoon clattered against an aluminum pan. Her mother was making hot chocolate. Christine must be standing at her elbow. A nonstop talker, that one. All those questions followed by a litany of noncommittal answers. “I don’t know. I really can’t say. You need to ask Leone about that.”
When Leone returned to the kitchen, three cups of steamy hot chocolate sat on the table. While Opal sorted the cards for a new game, Christine pulled a stack of hard chocolate chip cookies out of a blue cellophane package and piled them on a plate like poker chips. Leone put a magazine she had tucked under her arm down in front of Christine, opened it, and tapped her finger on the masthead.
“This is the first issue of a magazine I helped bring out, Dune Forum.”
Opal dealt the cards.
“Look here.” Leone flipped over to the credits and pointed to her biographical note.
As Christine read, her eyes widened, then narrowed. “This was a long time ago. Did you really write a book?”
“I really did, but it was never published.”
“What was it about?”
“Shall we start this round?” Opal scooted the card deck into view.
“Nothing a girl your age would understand.”
Christine scrolled her finger down the table of contents and found Leone’s name. Then she leafed through the magazine and found her aunt’s poem, Symphony of Water. She read it out loud.
Opal gathered up the cards, put them away, and went to feed the dog.
“I don’t understand this poem, Aunt Leone.”
Leone shrugged.
Christine re-read a few lines out loud.
Knowledge breaks.
We gather the things that we are.
And we are tears, and we are dew,
And we are rain, and we are sweat.
We are every running river,
We are every soaring sea.
We belong, we belong …
“I get it! It’s about not understanding. Like trying to understand who we are and where we come from, and why stuff happens to us.”
Did I write those words? Leone stared out the window. Her eyes rested on a rose bush in full bloom. Something she couldn’t see was making a commotion under the bush, causing the branches to shake and the blowsy yellow roses to drop their petals.
Christine babbled on. “In the poem, you ask the mother for comfort. You don’t ask the father for anything. Why not?”
“What? Are they teaching psychoanalysis in grammar school?”
“What’s that?”
“Never mind.”
“We study poetry.” Christine lost her smile. “I am good at it.” Her eyes hardened briefly, in the way that a friendly dog who receives an unexpected slap turns feral and then catches itself before it snaps.
In retort, Leone recited another few lines from her poem.
“‘It is the thing between. An asking and an answer. It is the shore …” Some of us prefer to sit on the shore, Christine. We don’t ask, and we have no answers.
“You never ask God for answers?” Christine seemed at the ready to supply the answers, but Leone stopped her.
“I have never asked God for anything, and He has kindly obliged me.”
“Are you sure about that?” Opal spoke with quiet, heartfelt finality.
Leone’s throat tightened. She supposed her words were sacrilege. She felt like a cattle rustler in a Western film, standing on the scaffold with a rope around her neck. Did she have any last words on the subject?
“I am fairly certain I have never asked God for help unless you count the times I swore at Jesus and asked Him to get Sister Isabel off my back. But you are right. I can’t accuse Him of not trying to get my attention. He has tried. Several times. I guess I just don’t have it in me to respond.”
Something moved in the periphery of her vision. Foe or friend? Was it creeping toward her or darting away? Time to leave, now, before the floor fell away under her feet.
Leone reached over and pulled the magazine out from underneath the girl’s scrutiny, but not roughly. She shoved it down into the overstuffed green canvas bag that stood on the floor. “I have to go change now.” She looked at her watch, then held out her arm. “Look at the time, would you. My friend is picking me up in just a few minutes.”
“So I guess we aren’t going shopping.” Christine’s voice was steady, her words less a question than a statement of fact.
Opal dropped a hand down on the girl’s shoulder. “It’s getting late. We’ll go tomorrow. You have time to go outside before dinner if you like.”
“Yes, tomorrow.” Leone shooed Christine away from the table. The girl walked to the back door and pulled open the screen. Her feet tripped slowly down the stairs. Before long, the rusty chain on the swing set began its complaint.
Leone hauled her canvas bag to the bedroom and reappeared moments later wearing high-waisted dungarees cuffed at the ankle and a green buffalo-plaid shirt, worn thin. She stood by the living room window, looking out to the street. “Hey.” Her raised voice echoed. “How come you don’t have any furniture in here?”
Opal came out of the kitchen and stood in the center of the room, her feet falling naturally into third position. Unaware of the habit, Leone was sure, her mother checked her posture in the mirror and straightened her shoulders.
Leone looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time; the mirrored wall, the bare floor, the ballet barre. Her eyes froze. She pressed her lips together, biting them between her teeth until the inside of her lower lip felt raw.
“I’m still working, Leone. We talked about this. This room is my dance studio. I have students during the week.”
“That’s right. You did say that. Still teaching the neighbor kids proper posture and social grace?”
“Dance steps go in and out of fashion, but people always have the need to present themselves well to others. After what we have all been through, this world could use a little grace, don’t you think?”
“I suppose it could, but what do I know about grace? Once I danced in Hollywood and read my poetry in North Beach bars. Now I’m a dog groomer. I didn’t tell that to Christine, but Jane knows. I’m sure she’ll tell Christine first chance she gets.”
Opal reached a hand out to touch Leone, but this time, Leone flinched and pulled back. Opal let her hand fall in a way as natural to her as closing a dance movement. Leone gave her mother a hard look, but somewhere, in the recesses of her mind, the beauty of the music that sustained her mother registered. The agony of knowing that beauty was so close and so unattainable to her made Leone desperate for a drink.
Opal spoke quietly. “It’s an honorable profession, caring for animals. We’ve always loved dogs. Jane can’t handle them now, but both you girls loved dogs.”
“Jane can barely handle her girls.”
Opal’s dark eyes shimmered. “I do what I can to help her. Christine spends a lot of time here with me. It’s good for both of us.”
Leone turned her face away.
“I know you had dreams that didn’t come true.” Opal ignored the sound of a car engine that slowed to an idle by the mailbox. “But working with something you love, the way you do? That is no small accomplishment.”
The car turned and pulled up in the driveway.
“Don’t wait up. I’ll be late.”
“The door will be unlocked.”