It’s funny how memories bring the past in punches, or wander forlornly, leading to stories half remembered. But if we pay close attention, the forgotten holes can be filled in more often than not.
I remember an Easter phone call on a morning lost to champagne and unprecedented April heat. Lying dazed on my single bed in the late afternoon, Siamese cat on my stomach, I listened to the rumblings of my family still sipping from tall crystal glasses in the kitchen. I almost slept. Almost. Until the phone rang.
I propped myself on one elbow, careful not to disturb Burma Rose, and waited for someone to pick up the kitchen extension. Soon my mother’s voice conversed with a disembodied someone and I rested back into my pillow hoping to sleep. Instead her high-pitched, tipsy voice called out for me.
“Annelieeeeeeese, phone is for you.” A meaningful pause, and then: “And it’s a boy….”
I opened my eyes and tried to still the spinning ceiling. A boy. Wesley? Merrick? Whoever it was, I couldn’t imagine why any boy would call me at Easter, when everyone was preparing dinner with their families. I gathered up Burma Rose, who laid back her ears with a scowl, and dragged us both to the end of the hall to pick up the phone in my parents’ room.
I dumped the cat on the bed and bent to grab the receiver from a bedside table. My head spun. My father, himself three-sheets-to-the-wind, had hovered over my empty glass with the last of the bottle an hour before, and I hadn’t resisted. Now I paid for that, flopping onto the bed, phone to my ear. I lay back on a stack of soft pillows and closed my eyes.
“Hurry and pick up!” yelled my mother from the kitchen. “And don’t let him know you’re drunk. Maybe he likes good girls!” She couldn’t see my eyes roll from down the hall.
“Hello?”
“Is this Anneliese?” said a male voice. I heard the extension click into its cradle in the kitchen.
“Yep.” I didn’t hide my annoyance.
“There’s someone here who wants to talk to you.” All at once, I recognized the proper lisp and elegant flow of words. Suddenly sober, I pressed the phone close to my ear and whispered into the receiver, glancing at the bedroom door to check for eavesdroppers.
“Christopher?”
“It’s me, indeed,” he said. “You-know-who would like to talk to you.”
“So why are you calling me?”
“Seriously, Sweetie? What if your mom answered and it was her on the line?” He didn’t wait for my response. “Hold on,” he said. My heart began to pound in my ears as I waited for Rebecca’s voice to slip through the line.
“Liese…?” she asked more than said, her soft voice melting like chocolate in my ear. Her words slurred slightly, pleasantly.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey. So…Christopher and I are in my shop drinking Jack Daniels.”
“On Easter?” Through the white filigrees curtains I could see the sun inching low on the horizon. I hoped the heat would fade with it.
“We didn’t know what else to do. My mom’s in Bishop, Christopher’s family isn’t talking to him, and neither of us is attached just now, ya know?” Her words stung. I had tried like hell to attach myself to her. To be everything she wanted. “Anyway,” she continued, “we’re a little drunk and we got to talking…”
“I’m a little drunk, too,” I told her, “we had champagne this morning.” I kicked myself for interrupting but I wanted her to see me as an equal. One who was free to over-indulge at will. Just like her.
“Who’s all over there?”
“My cousins, my aunt, their friends. A bunch of people.” My stomach lurched on unsettled champagne and I fought off nausea, trying to concentrate on Rebecca’s words. “What were you and Christopher talking about?”
“I just told him that I… that I want you to know that I…Liese, we…”
At that exact moment, the moment when Rebecca’s words were straining to reach me on the other end of the coiled phone line, my mother barged into the room.
“Just look at that sunset!” she raved and flung the light curtain aside. “Anneliese, look!”
I covered the mouthpiece. “I’m on the phone, Mother.”
“Well put it down for a minute and come and look.”
She meant to disturb me. To make sure that nothing was more important to me than my family. She had been excited for me to talk to a boy but now she meant to sabotage. I wondered what she’d heard. “Hold on,” I sighed heavily to Rebecca, “I have to do something.” I set the phone on the bed and got up to stand next to my giddy, swaying mother, knowing she would not leave until I humored her.
“The sunset is pink,” I said, bored and put out. I walked back to the bed and picked up the phone. “I’m sorry,” I said into the receiver.
“Be that way!” shouted my mother as she left the room to join the Easter revelers in the kitchen. But Rebecca was no longer on the line.
“I’m sorry,” came Christopher’s sweet voice, “she just can’t. She loves you, but she can’t.”
“Christopher, please, put her back on,” I said, desperate to recapture the moment. “Why can’t she? What does she want to tell me?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“What can’t you tell me? Christopher, don’t do this to me!” The humid air and evening heat became a monsoon in my growing panic.
“You wouldn’t understand now, Baby. It’s not your fault. Just let her go.”
“I can’t let her go, Christopher, you know that.”
“You can, Anneliese. She is miserable. You are miserable.”
“I know she loves me, Christopher. Don’t say she doesn’t.”
“I didn’t say that. And it isn’t the point.”
The kind of tears that flow without sound, without breath, poured from me. I was losing again. The only love I wanted. The only love I would ever need. Three miles away, in a window-lined room full of costumes, Rebecca and Christopher sat together with a phone and a bottle of whiskey in the only place I wanted to be; a place I could never be.
“I’m going to hang up now,” said Christopher.
“Why did you even call me?” I sobbed. But the vibrant static that connected me to them through the wire was silent. A black hole opened up. He hadn’t heard. She was gone.
Burma Rose made it her duty to fix my troubles. She began kneading my hair, claws contracting at the base of my neck as I cried into my mother’s pillow. Her purr, low and insistent, sought to penetrate whatever spell so vexed me. Her need to soothe me intensified until her claws sunk deep into my neck. I reached back to disentangle long paws from my hair, then gathered her into my chest where she curled into a ball. The ponderous heat persisted past nightfall.
* * *
The steep hills of Pacific Crest slope toward the harbor where a bronze statue of a sailor stands as if bracing himself for heavy seas. With his back to the ocean, his hard stare is fixed on the cliffs where the town overlooks the ocean. During a storm, you can watch the waves break over the jetty, tossing the sails of the old brig, Pioneer. On calm days, dolphin fins break the surface and hollow barking can be heard for miles from rusting buoys where seals cling, rocking and calling and shoving each other into the harbor.
In this town, along these streets, we learned to drive, went to school, got our first jobs, ditched our classes, held hands in the sand, kissed each other with the thrill of freedom, little debaucheries on our lips.
Our science teachers owned a schooner called the Orca II. Year after year it floated, hitched to a wooden dock under a seafood restaurant window, its green paint worn and its tall sails furled. Mr. Simons and Mr. Dunne taught us about sailing and took us beyond the jetty, telling tales of the harbor’s founder and how he stood up for the rights of working deckhands. But my favorite part of Pacific Crest lore was that the town had been called “The only romantic spot on the coast.”
Merrick’s house was high on a bluff, just down the street from our high school where he, too, had sailed on the Orca II and camped in the Bay of Las Animas at the end of senior year. I remember his kitchen, much like mine. The tract houses, all built in the late sixties, offered affordable American dreams. Small plots of land and stucco walls, we all lived like the Bradys with green shag carpets and white tile counters. Our fathers were businessmen or doctors, ever dressed in suits and sipping martinis. Most commuted long distances to the big cities, far from the protected beach hubs to the south, where their children navigated childhood with stay-at-home moms, soccer teams, surf grommets and dial-a-ride.
In the kitchen, Merrick’s older sister was baking. She pulled oatmeal cookies from the oven and winked at her brother.
“Z’at what I think it is?” he asked her.
“You guys want some?”
“Absolutely,” he grinned, “how much should we eat?”
She glanced at me, sized me up. “Two should be enough,” she said, and left us alone. Merrick took two cookies from the plate for himself and two more for me, handing them over as he led me down the hall to his bedroom.
“You like Yes?” he asked as he dropped the record down the spindle on the turntable. A diamond-head needle zipped and cracked on vinyl grooves. I hadn’t heard of Yes but I didn’t say so. The style was familiar so I simply said, “Sounds good.”
“Take a bite,” he said, “but eat slowly.”
“Slowly?” I laughed. As I bit I caught a familiar scent and began to understand the look on Merrick’s face.
“Wait, don’t you get stoned?” he asked.
“Um, well, here and there.”
“Have you ever eaten it?”
“No.”
“Well, it’s a blast, go ahead.”
I thought of the giddy, tired feeling of marijuana in my lungs laced with the softness of Rebecca’s lips. I did not want to think of her. Or lose my cool with Merrick. I took a bite. I hope you’re happy, Rebecca.
Merrick came to the single bed in his small room with one window and sat beside me. I stared at the wall, lined with plastic yellow bins crammed with carefully alphabetized record albums, and waited for something to happen. I was beginning to feel annoyed by the high-pitched voices oozing from the record player. I decided I did not like Yes.
“You probably need more,” he said, sliding his arm behind me. I took another bite. His body next to mine felt foreign and stiff. But he was good-natured and happy to be with me, so I did not move away.
“And this,” he said, and leaned his weight into me so I lay back on his bed. He covered my body with his. “Is it your first time for this as well?” It wasn’t unexpected. We had come to the moment in that unspoken way friends will decide to go for a walk but end up having lunch instead.
“Yes,” I said. I felt the oatmeal cookies dissolving and delivering herbs to my blood.
“The pot will make it hurt less,” he said in my ear.
Hurt less? “I’m not your first virgin, then?” I said, hoping to sound cool.
“You are my first virgin.”
“But not you…?”
He laughed. “No, not me. I’m an old pro. Just kidding. But I’ll go slow. You’ll be all right.”
When I was little I walked under the pedestrian tunnel to Strands Beach with my mother. Graffiti cluttered the walls and Ingrid and I shouted to hear our voices echo back to us. Over an aqua-sprayed dolphin with white foam edges, in red capital letters, FUCK was emblazoned on the tunnel at an odd angle. I sounded it out, as a six-year-old does. Mother made no effort to stop me.
“What does it mean?” I asked her.
“It’s what a man and a woman do to make a baby,” she said without hesitation. I frowned.
“Why is it written on the dolphin?” I asked.
“No reason. Just some kid being a smart ass.”
“How do they make a baby?”
My mother was clinical and spilled it with all the flair of a Grey’s Anatomy chapter.
“But,” she added, “we only do that with someone we love very much and only when we are married adults.”
And here I was breaking all the rules. So what? Right now, I had my virginity to lose. Loving Merrick was the farthest thing from my mind, but he was more than willing to receive what I volunteered.
Mother neglected to tell me about the pain. How was this a thing to be shared with someone I loved? I was pretty sure I would hate Merrick after this.
“Don’t worry about the blood,” he said, “It will stop.”
There, now. At once a sacrificial lamb and an empty vessel. No longer sacred. I was Rebecca’s for the taking.
Staring down at me, he reached over to the nightstand where he had set the rest of a cookie and a bottle of Drambuie liqueur. “Bite,” he said, and pressed the crumbling sweet stuff into my mouth. Burning and raw now, I swallowed obediently. “And now this,” he said and putting a shot glass to my lips. I swallowed again. “The pain won’t last,” he said. At that moment, I hated Rebecca, too.
Returning to my body now, for in those moments I had wandered off, choosing not to witness, I took the last of the second cookie off the table, finished it, and downed another shot of sickeningly sweet Drambuie. My eyes fixed on the window. I felt like a block of cement. Moving my gaze took conscious effort. I was beginning to feel more than a little scared.
“Was it just pot that we ate?”
“Pot and oatmeal. Why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t feel very well.”
“Get dressed, let’s get some air.”
I don’t remember how long it took to accomplish that task. Moving as if through molasses we passed Merrick’s sister in the kitchen. She looked at us with a simultaneous frown and smile.
“How many did you eat?”
“You told us to take two. We ate two.”
“Two each?” she looked at the plate of cookies.
“Well, yeah.”
“I meant two for both of you,” she laughed and shook her head at Merrick.
Merrick shrugged and looked at me. “Coffee,” he said. We drove in his old gold station wagon down the road to the Salty Dog Cafe where he led me across the parking lot and into a Naugahyde booth. He sat across from me and ordered. I looked at him and tried to make sense of the face in front of me—tried to still him into a single being. Despite my efforts he swam into double and triple vision.
“I don’t like this at all,” I said.
“Don’t sweat it, it will wear off. You’re just paranoid.”
“I can’t think,” I told him. I was beginning to panic. “I want my brain back.”
“I’ll take you home,” he said.
I don’t remember the drive but we parked across from my house while I tried to pull myself together enough to go in the house. Overcoming the obstacle of the front door, I made the announcement that I was ill, passed the T.V. watchers and meal preparers, and went to bed, no longer a virgin.
* * *
Weeks away from the studio turned into months. Writing became a ceremony of regret and catharsis. My notebook waited on my desk in plain view. I left it there, knowing Ingrid was curious. An invitation to a mystery that would unfold for both of us, if she cared to know. One day I opened it to write in my black razor pilot pen and there was her lighter blue ballpoint on the next page. It was the stuff of sisters that couldn’t be unraveled by those who were outside. It was about me and her and our childhood and marijuana smoke snaking above our heads in the rain. Dizzy with her words, I wrote back to her and replaced the notebook. Soon, it became our ritual. Neglected thoughts found a place on the pages. Quiet conversations waited patiently to evolve. I found my sister again.
Anneliese: I remember you and me side-by-side, glowing, grinning, singing Pentangle loud and wine-washed, “sisters” etched on our foreheads like some supernatural tattoo. Holding hands as if we were six. How is it that I hardly recognize us? How is it that I’ve lost you?
Next to her words she taped a photograph of the two of us laughing in the sand.
I wanted her to remember this:
Ingrid: A Cornish wake and sleeplessness and the window shook and she tried to say something else. And Daddy didn’t know what to say and Stephen said an Irish prayer and Joyce scattered ashes on Ortega Highway and then you said, “She would never hurt you. She loves you. You are twin souls.” How old are you? I’m ancient. How young are you? I’m fetal. Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Phosphorous, We are.
Anneliese: I opened your door, so seemingly locked, aching for your poetry books, and found them gone. Where are your books? I needed The World’s Erotic and Child’s Garden like hell and instead rummaged through mother’s antiques. Found “for Jim and Fred, 1899” scribbled in the cover of brittle pages. Speaking to my fingers like a blind man from the past. Hooking me in the heart. It was saying, “touch me!” so I did. And the books sit beside me now awaiting unfamiliar eyes to complete this satisfaction. They and I need each other.
Ingrid: There are small gestures a mulberry tree can make in a California state where seasons sneak around like married lovers and only those who love them notice.
Anneliese: I come along behind you like the weightless things the air pulls along and people say, “Look, she’s flying on the wind! Carried on the wind! Does she wish she had flight of her own?”
And so we went on.