TAPE TWELVE 3/2/86

The next day Brigitta found me at a quiet place and made our situation clear. She asked my age and then said that I knew more and said less than most sixteen-year-olds she’d met in the U.S. I told her doing was better than talking. She said that in her country it was not so unusual for couples, if they were serious, to have sex. She was in love with a boy from there and had been true to him during the year she’d been a high school exchange student. Her grades had been so good she’d won a scholarship to U.C. Berkeley in her field, some kind of engineering. It was such an opportunity she’d decided
to stay on, but was still true to her boyfriend. Here she made an interesting distinction between mind and body that I didn’t really follow.
By that point I guess I was changing my attitude toward Marlene. I felt I still loved her, but the way she’d cut me off hurt a lot. Letters I’d written to her from the lake continued to be returned, so I’d stopped writing. They gave out letters at lunch in the dining room, and it was embarrassing to receive only returned ones. I began to see some good points in Brigitta’s idea that you could remain true in spirit, if not in body. Anyway, she told me that any continued activity would depend on me. She had no worry about infection, as I didn’t seem promiscuous, but she had no intention of returning home a mother. I would have to find protection and a safe place.
With Marlene this had never been a concern of mine. I guess maybe she used a diaphragm or something. But now I became very motivated in this area, because it was clear that without the help of Brigitta’s body I wasn’t going to make it through the summer.
I knew what rubbers were and how they worked. In ninth grade Al had seen one in the gutter when we riding our bikes home. We both laughed at it, but when we considered what was in it and where it had been, we were properly disgusted. I knew you could buy them at drug stores, but getting inconspicuously to a Stateline drug store and then getting nerve to ask for them were definitely problems.
Then one evening a group of the crew boys decided to maraud around Stateline. There really wasn't much we could do there. We were all too young to gamble or drink, and no one on the crew drank anyway - or said so if they did. Still, it was some entertainment just to walk around and watch. Some of the guys slipped dimes in the slot machines until they were caught and driven out. This time I decided to go along, and in the back of my mind was the idea that there might be a chance to slip into a drug store unnoticed.
About a mile before Stateline there was a group of small casinos that were ragged looking compared to the middle class glitz that was invading Stateline by the mid '50s. These casinos still looked rough and ready like the ones of the thirties, but their time was passing. Already one near the small air strip had been closed down for some delinquency and never reopened.
As always, the driver that night was Dino, the cook, who was in his thirties and the only one on the crew with a car. For some reason he decided to give the closed casino a closer look. The place looked like a very big log cabin. No trespassing signs were posted on all the doors. The bunch of us circled around the building, then, finding a weak-looking back door, pried it open with a jack handle. We found ourselves in a small kitchen and proceeded through it to the main gaming room. Everything was still there. Chairs, tables, games, and bar stood dusty but ready for the next high roller. Only the slot machines had been taken out. Despite their saintly backgrounds, several of the guys were ready to pillage and loot. They found empty boxes and began filling them with gaming chips, bar glasses, even wall hangings showing cowboys doing dirty deeds.
From the main room the raid continued into the offices and other rooms which were mostly empty. Then a big whoop sounded from the women's head. Someone had discovered the Kotex machine, and they figured a dispensing machine meant a coin box. Funny how much room there was for larceny in those saintly hearts. Sure enough, after producing the jack handle and prying the dispenser from the wall, quarters rolled to the floor followed by a grabbing mob that looked like kids at a piñata party.
The men's head was next, and two treasures were found there: a cologne dispenser and - you guessed it - a condom machine. The cologne machine didn't produce much change, but lots of ammunition for a cologne war that progressed down the hall and through the main room until everyone was stinking. We returned to the men's room, and I watched intently as the rubber machine fell next. It was well fastened to the wall, but as it finally gave way to a chorus of cheers and a flood of change and silvery little packets, I stayed back while the other dived again for the money and quietly stuffed my pockets with the rubbers, unnoticed in the dim light.
If getting protection looked like a tough problem whose solution turned out to be easy, finding a place for us to meet seemed to have an obvious solution that proved to be a little tricky. Grandpa's room had all that we needed, but when to use it was not so easy to work out.
It couldn't be after work, because in a small place like the grounds everyone seemed to know what the other guy was doing almost before he did it. Anyway, like I said, in the pairing that took place during the summer, my roommate, Jim Eisenman, had ended up with Brigitta. He would be sure to notice if both of us were missing for any period of time.
During the summer my mother usually used the cabin for only a couple of weeks. The rest of the time she let the grounds use it for conference people on a commission basis. When they did that, they usually paid one of the crew girls extra to clean it on Saturday afternoon. I told Brigitta to be sure to get that job, and she did.
Once a week was not really enough for me the way I felt. I could have been with her every day and not have had enough, but I had to be satisfied. The rest of the week I tried to keep the thoughts at a distance by knocking myself out with work and waiting for Saturday when I could knock myself out with Brigitta.
Sometimes the two things conflicted, like one Saturday when Frank was all upset because work wasn't going fast enough on a new drain field for the large septic tank below the boys' dormitory. The next Monday two hundred people were scheduled to arrive there for a conference, and Frank could picture sewer water rolling down the hill into the lake while state inspectors closed the whole place down for the rest of the summer.
Because I'd become such a glutton for work, he grabbed me and two others who hadn't managed to escape for the weekend and set us to work digging out the trenches for the rest of the lines. It was hard work because that part of the hill was mostly boulders and tree roots, so that digging a three foot deep trench often involved digging a lot more just to get rid of the rocks. Also, even in the mountains, the sun in mid-July can be damn hot.
The others were bitching that we'd be at it all weekend, but there was no way I'd let that happen. They just didn't have my inspiration. I took off my shirt and settled in with the old breathing and pacing. Sometimes the others just sat back and watched me. I knew they thought I was a maniac, but that didn't bother me. My whole attitude toward work had changed in one year. Now I felt almost hungry for it, both because it was an escape and
because it was building me up. My chest and shoulders were really thickening out.
By two-thirty the trench was done, and we'd even laid out the orangeburg pipes in it. Frank was delighted and told us to knock off. The covering-over would be an easy job for Monday morning.
I made like I was headed for the crew dorm, but once I was out of sight I doubled back on a trail that took me below the front of our cabin. The front door was open. Brigitta was probably inside.
Even then I didn't go right to Grandpa's room but continued on a little way to be sure no one else was around. Finally I circled, slipped under the back porch and into the basement room. I was filthy and my clothes were worse. I took them off and showered in the tiny bathroom. I figured that the sound of the water running would also let Brigitta know I was there.
The only clothes I could find were some my mother had stored away in Grandpa's dresser. They should have been thrown, but this time I was lucky she hadn't. I came up with a pair of my father's swim trunks and a cut-off sweatshirt of Dan's. I still wasn't up to Dan's size, even after all the work. The sweatshirt sort of hung on me, but my father's shorts fit me exactly. In his fifties he still had the waist of a sixteen-year-old.
I was glad I had a few minutes to rest and get some strength back before Brigitta came down. I stretched back on Grandpa's solid old double bed. There was no way I could be in that house without thoughts pouring over me, but now that I had Brigitta, it didn't bother me so much to feel them coming.
I remembered the room the way it had been when I was a little kid. Then it was my father's shop. It had a dirt floor, and you could see all the boulders under the house. There were a couple of small windows that were always dirty and a big work bench made out of pine planks. Along the walls were an assortment of oddball cabinets and even an old wooden ice box where my father kept some tools.
I could clearly see the old shop with its bench as I lay there. It wasn't a vision or anything - just a memory - but it was a memory that had come to me often since entered Grandpa's room that first day. I could see my father seated there in the late afternoon working on some piece. In that little area, using pretty simple tools, he worked on detailed pieces for construction projects he was doing. Fine moldings, cornices, door frames and bannisters flowed out from his lathe and chisel.
When he'd let me, I'd sit and watch his hands caress and guide the wood into its forms as though forcing it to follow silent commands it couldn't resist. Sometimes he finished really difficult things at amazing speed, but when he worked like that I watched his hands, not his eyes, because sometimes there was something there that scared me. There were times when he sent me out and wouldn't let me watch him at all.
Sometimes - often, in fact - when my father was in that mood of explosive concentration - some inner genius producing external wonders - Grandpa would come to the shop and sit with him. If I could, I'd sneak back in to listen, and, even though I was only a kid, the conversation would amaze me.
Time after time it would be the same thing. My father driving on like a fiend, seemingly oblivious to anyone else there, my grandfather sniffing around like a friendly dog, and then the questions would start. They always had the same quality - really dumb.
"What's this tool? (for the hundredth time) Why are you cutting that there? Why didn't you use that wood instead of this?"
And my father - always a silent man, but totally out of contact to most humans when he was in that state - would struggle to form the words, would actually have to concentrate on the tool to form its name. Then, no sooner had he fought through the answer, another stupidity would be waiting, and, out of respect for his father-in-law, he would struggle through the response. Even at my age it infuriated me that Grandpa could be so insensitive to my father's creativity. Once I even yelled out, "It's an awl, Grandpa," only to be nailed to the wall by my grandfather's large hazel eyes suddenly turned to death rays.
Every time that scene played, the end would be the same. After forcing his way through the litany - painfully at first, then, gradually, like a child reciting his verses with more calm - my father would lose the thing in his eyes. He would put down his work and go out, or the two of them would go fishing, with me tagging behind.
Somewhere I read that no behavior is without motive, and I suppose that stupidity is a pretty good motive for stupid behavior. But that was what was so irritating about the way my grandfather sometimes treated my father. Like I said before, Grandpa was not a stupid man. He'd founded several churches. He helped start the conference grounds. He had charge of one of the biggest churches in San Jose. These are not the accomplishments of a stupid man.
When I think of Grandpa I remember how he loved hiking and fishing. About as soon as I could walk he had me all over the Tahoe basin behind him. It was like hiking with a talking encyclopedia. I was always being treated to lectures on history, or geology, or chipmunks, or lizards to the point where maybe I got a little impatient with his genius. He was pretty good about that, though. I guess he knew most people couldn't keep up with him. You would have thought that at the age when I knew him he wouldn't still be trying to learn stuff, but he always had some book he was studying, and when he saw my eyes glazing over he'd go back to that or to writing some sermon.
If Grandpa was tremendously verbal, my father was the opposite. He had no trouble talking if he wanted to, but what I learned from him came more from quiet example. He never told us much about his life or his family before he came to California. I think he once said he came from Kansas - or maybe I heard that from someone else - and that his parents both died or disappeared when he was young. He never said who raised him, and I was never aware that he communicated with anyone from Kansas. In his teens he picked up carpentry by working with a carpenter as a helper. How many years of formal education he had, he never told me.
If he wasn't formally educated, no one could tell it. When he spoke it was simple and clear and to the point. But I know it was his example that convinced me that silence, rather than speech, can more easily be taken - or mistaken - for intelligence.
What really spoke loudest about my father was simply his physical presence. Like I said, he was tall and good-looking and very strong in the upper body. Physically, Danny takes after him more than I do. But more than his appearance, he had a kind of confidence in things - like he knew more about really important things than anyone else did - that always impressed people and drew them to him when he would let them. Of course, as far as Danny and I were concerned, we worshipped him. That is, we did up to a certain time.
As we got older, he began to change. Whether it was just with us, I'm not sure. It was more with Danny than with me, probably because he was older. One day it got really bad.
I don't remember the exact cause of it. Danny was always a little hardheaded, and I guess, like most kids, it got worse when he was fourteen or fifteen. That day my father wanted him to do something or to stop doing something, and Danny didn't move very fast. Finally, my father took out his belt, but he'd never hit either of us with anything more than his hand on our butts - and hardly ever even that - so Danny didn't take it very seriously. When my father hit him, Danny got furious and more hardheaded than ever, and that only got my father going worse. I saw that thing come into his eyes like when he was working with his pieces, but there was no way he was going to turn Danny like a piece of knotty pine. I got petrified, and if I hadn't finally broken out of it, I really think Dan would've ended up dead or maimed. I got our mother, and she got between them, but not before my father almost whipped her, too. I've never seen fury like that in her eyes. She didn't say much, but my father sure stopped cold. No one ever said anything about it afterwards, but I think Danny's problems probably started from that time.
The thought of all that was getting me upset. I got up and went to the alcove where Grandpa's monster mahogany desk still sat and opened up the curtains behind it. The afternoon sun was full over Marla Bay. The afternoon wind had set up a strong chop on the lake, and the flashing silver reflected into the room and danced on the ceiling. A cone broke from one of the trees next to the house, rolled down the roof two floors above and dropped by the window.
These great windows were another part of the mystery between my father and Grandpa. When my father had finished this basement room there were almost no windows in it. The alcove was really a five-sided bay that on the floor above was filled with windows and was the glory of the cabin. Guests always went nuts about the view it gave of the lake from the south end almost to the north end. On the ground level, though, the bay used to be covered with planks and batting like the rest of the basement.
Grandpa once commented that he was running up the electric bill because he had to have his light on all the time, but I'm sure he wasn't prepared for what that comment produced.
On a trip to Carson City, my father had spotted a Victorian mansion being demolished. He knew the guy doing the work, and for very little he drove away with three huge windows. They were of very heavy plate glass, beveled on the edges and surrounded by borders of diamond-shaped pieces of crystal leaded in. They barely fit in the walls, and when they were installed they filled the whole room with mountain brilliance.
My grandfather's response was what was really amazing. He couldn't stop raving about them. He made sure they were cleaned regularly and wouldn't think of leaving the lake in the fall until special shutters were carefully installed over them to protect from winter drifts. Then he had heavy drapes hung inside and almost never opened them. I asked him about that once, and the told me he could do his best thinking like that, in dark places. It's a wonder he didn't write all his sermons in the bathroom.
Then for some reason I thought about Jim Eisenman, and that really pissed me off. Why he should come into thoughts about my family, I couldn't figure. There was no way the emotions I felt for them extended to him. In a summer full of control and abstention, the thing that required greatest control was having him for a roommate.
I'd known Eisenman since we were kinds. His family always brought him to the lake, too, but I never cared to play with him much. He was the kind of kid who knew, certain as hell, what he wanted to be. Of course, it was a minister; that was sort of like a virus around there. He would even play with girls and their dolls just so he could perform doll weddings. If some little animal was found dead, you could be damn sure he'd do a funeral.
Once I caught him with a pellet gun up by the big rocks at the crest of the hill. He claimed he was just practicing with pine cones, but I wondered why there was always such a good supply of dead lizards and birds in need of funerals when he was at the lake. It was just the kind of hypocritical shit I always worry about with ministers - not that I think they're all hypocrites. It's just that there are such a lot of good opportunities for it.
Take that stuff about him and Brigitta going together, for instance. Why the hell was he attracted to her? He was such an all-American hero and she was so foreign. Even though I made that crack about the crew girls, some of them were pretty tolerable-looking and would have been really happy to get paired up with ol' Jim. Brigitta wasn't even all that beautiful. She wasn't one of those tall blonde Scandinavians. She was sort of round and brown and earthy, like a good peasant.
What the hell did they talk about so endlessly by the lake or in the back of the dining hall? She never told me, but then we didn't talk much at all. Was he laboring to save her decadent European soul, or was he just expanding on his favorite topic: himself? I was sure he wasn't screwing her. He wasn't that good a hypocrite yet.
And why did she go with him? Was it to cover her other activities? I sure as hell hoped there weren't any other activities than me.
If it was hypocrisy that linked Eisenman and Grandpa in my mind - if Grandpa was hypocritical in the way he treated my father - maybe, in the end, Grandpa got fed up with it himself. In 1948, old, tired and sick, he accepted a "call" from a small church in Pasadena. Everyone raved and screamed against it; he was supposed to be retired. But he sold his house, got rid of a lot of his things and took an apartment in Pasadena.
The crazy thing was that within a few months my father got out of a very good position with a San Jose construction company and moved us down there, too. My mother was really pissed, but he claimed there were great opportunities in post-war construction projects in the south. He rented us a house in the Eagle Rock section of L.A., not far from Grandpa. About a year later, though, the old man died.
Two years after that, while driving back from a project he had started near Fontana, my father hit a concrete post under a bridge and was killed. It was a clear night. He never drank and was not drunk then. He never drove over fifty, but the police said he must have been doing eight-five or ninety. That was when people who knew about it began to talk about the other thing.
There was a faint tapping at the door. Quickly I closed the drapes and crossed the room. I surely was in need of a good fucking. And the fact that it would be with Jim Eisenman's girl made it all the sweeter.

Around the end of August my mother came up to spend the last couple weeks of the summer. Her staying at the cabin didn't make much difference to Brigitta and me. That was about over, anyway; she had to leave the crew early for college orientation. We had one last sandy screw under the big rocks at the top of the hill. It wasn't much of an ending, but then there wasn't much there to begin with.
One afternoon my mother stopped by where I was cleaning up one of the campgrounds and told me she wanted me to come by the cabin the next day. I figured she was getting ready to leave and wanted me to drive to L.A. with her. I had something different I wanted to suggest.
The next morning was pretty quiet, so I told Frank I needed to take off for a while. When I got to the cabin, the door was open. I let myself in the screen door. It was the first time I'd been in the main part of the house all summer. My mother was clinking around in the kitchen. The place hadn't changed much at all since I saw it last. It could have been ten years earlier. The smell of bacon and coffee filled the rooms. She used to cook a lot before things changed. She came out of the kitchen for something and was surprised to see me. Then she smiled in a friendly way that seemed different than the way she usually was with me.
It's funny how you see some people a lot, but don't really see them. I mean, you see them the way they were or the way you want them, but not how they've become. When I was old enough to make comparisons I guess I knew my mother was plain compared to other women. It wasn't something I cared much about, just an observation. But as she'd gotten older, she'd changed. Maybe it was because of her job. Maybe it was just the way some people are, like life develops their faces.
That morning she was wearing a light summer dress with no sleeves. She would have been forty-six then, but her body was still trim. Her arms were firm, with no sign of saggies. Her reddish hair had a little grey which made it look sandy. She had it cut in a neat, short style that suited her. Her freckles were covered with makeup, and for the first time I realized she'd become pretty good-looking. I bet that a lot of people would feel good about opening a bank account with a lady who looked like that.
She asked me if I wanted breakfast. I wasn't hungry, but for the first time in a long time I did want just to sit and talk with her, so I said yes. For some reason she'd cooked up a lot of food, and it didn't take her long to get it ready. While she set the table and brought out the food I studied the front room carefully. During the time I'd spent in Grandpa's room I'd had this kind of foreboding feeling about the upper parts of the house, like something was calling me, but repelling me at the same time. Now it seemed just as innocent and homelike as it always had when I was younger.
We talked a little as we sat in the sunlit bay, eating at the huge old, round oak table that almost filled it. She mentioned that she'd met an antique dealer from Stateline who might stop by to look at the table later that day. That surprised me. It was an ugly old thing, but it seemed like one of the fixtures of the place, and my mother never got rid of much of anything. Still I couldn't think of much to say to defend it.
She talked about stuff happening in Glendale. I wanted to tell her about my plan, but couldn't find a good opening. More and more it had come to me that I should stay in the mountains for the winter. I couldn't face going back to that school with all those snobby kids and their social games and without Marlene. The real mountain people - not the summer tourists - were a little clannish, or in some cases just plain strange, but they were easier for me to deal with.
My idea was that I could work part time for Frank for room and board and go to the new high school at Bijou on the California side. It had just come to me in the last couple of weeks, and I hadn't tried it out on anyone, but I figured if I could bring it up at the right time, it might work.
I was thinking about that when my mother said,
"The last time we talked - before you came up here - you said some things, some things we should talk about."
That really broke up my thoughts. My mind was thrown off at the sudden switch of topic and raced around for some way to head it off. Considering all the questions I'd thought about during the summer, what she wanted should have seemed like a good idea, but I was afraid I'd put my foot in it like the last time. I didn't want to lose the mood of the moment by letting that happen.
"Look, Ma," I began, "what I said - you know how I was then - I didn't mean - I mean, you did the right thing, telling me to come up here. I've had a lot of time to think things through, and I don't think..."
"I'm not bringing it up to get us upset again," she cut in. "I just think there are many things that you and I have never talked about - about your father and other things - and that maybe now is a good time."
Her voice was calm. The friendly smile was still there. The iron visor she was always wearing when we were together didn’t seem to be there, or at least it was opened. Even the day was bright and crisp and optimistic. Maybe then was the time to talk some things out. There didn't seem to be much way to avoid it.
"I guess you need to know some things about your father," she went on. "You were only eleven when he...After his death it was - still is - hard for me to talk much about it. It came as such a shock...But maybe it shouldn't have. You said I killed him."
"Ma, you know I didn't..."
"I know. I know. But I'll always wonder if it was something I didn't do, something I wasn't capable of doing, that could have saved him."
"Then you think it's true that he killed himself."
"What? No! I've never thought that. Whoever told you that? I think it was an accident, but...maybe he wasn't...maybe he wasn't...taking care. Maybe he was concentrating too hard on his work...on other things."
"Concentrating?"
"Even at your age, you must have known that there were times when he wasn't exactly there."
"You mean, like crazy?"
"No, I don't mean crazy." A note of tenseness entered her voice. "I mean he was a man who could concentrate on things so hard that at times it was like he blocked out the rest of the world. It was part of his genius, but it could be dangerous. It was like he disappeared into himself, into his thoughts. I've always believed that was what happened to him when he had the accident. Maybe he was concentrating like that when it happened. He must have blacked out and lost control."
"But why would he let that happen when he was driving? You drove with him a lot. Did that ever happen before?"
"No. I only noticed that sort of thing when he was working or sometimes when he was watching the lake or the mountains. In the city I rarely saw it, but then I got so I usually didn't stay around him when he was working."
"Why not?"
"Well, it seemed to irritate him some."
"That's all?"
She didn't answer, but I had the feeling that those memories still scared he a little.
"But if he didn't usually get like that in the city, why would it have happened to him the day of the accident?"
"I don't know. We had a lot of problems after we moved to Los Angeles, mostly economic. He thought it would be better there, but he had such a good job in San Jose. It was never the same. Finally, he had to drive clear to Fontana for work. It got him down."
"Then you think he might have done it on purpose?"
"I told you no!"
This time her nerves were clearly up, and a hard edge had begun in her voice. I should have backed off, but I couldn't.
"Why did we have to move to L.A., anyway?"
"Your father said there were better opportunities there in construction, but the unions were strong, and it was hard for him to get in. It had something to do with your grandfather, too, I'm sure. I pleaded with him not to take that church in Pasadena. He just wasn't up to it, and it killed him. I'm sure your father felt responsible for him, that he had to be near him, to help him in case of trouble." She paused, then continued in a more bitter tone. "If there was ever anyone who didn't need anyone else's help, it was my father.
"I always thought Grandpa and my father got along pretty well."
"Yes, to you it would seem that way. You weren't around when..."
She hesitated. I think she was sorry she'd got the whole thing going. To bring out so many of her private thoughts was really against her character. Finally she went on, as though it was something nasty that had to be gotten through.
"Your grandfather hated your father, at least at one time. I don't think he ever came to like him much. He never understood him. My father did everything he could to keep us from marrying, and afterward I always had the feeling he looked down on us - down on your father because he wasn’t formally educated and down on me for marrying him. Sometimes he could be so patronizing, it was infuriating."
I couldn't believe I was hearing all this - that my mother resented her own father like that, that this had gone on all the time I was a kid, and I'd never felt it. She had to be wrong, but who was I to say that? She seemed to be running on automatic now, words pouring out of her, not all of it stuff I wanted to hear.
"When I first met your father it was here at the lake. I don't think he even noticed me; he was so busy with my father, explaining his plans for the cabin. Sometimes during that first summer I would come and sit on a boulder and watch him working. Even then, when he was so young, he could lose himself for hours in his world of wood and tools, ignoring me totally. It wasn't really all that flattering.
"It's not that I was used to all that much attention. I was never Miss Popularity. Oh, I had enough friends in high school and college, but by the time I met your father I was in my twenties. Any pretenders I'd had were out of the picture then. Still, he seemed rude and antisocial. Actually, I think it was that he just didn't know how to be very social. In the years since, from little things he said, I decided that he must have had a very hard childhood, and it was work that let him forget those memories.
"At the time, though, it hurt me to be ignored, especially because, for the first time in my life, I just couldn't walk away unaffected. Sometimes, when the day was hot, he would take off his shirt and work like that. I know he didn't do it to impress me; it seemed to make no difference if I were there or not. But the feelings he set off in me, seeing him like that, were exciting and frightening. He was very different from the boys I knew. They were all so white and bony and sincere. He was, well, you remember what he looked like - like some natural being, a graceful animal."
I'd never heard my mother talk anything like that. It was a little uncomfortable, but fascinating. Still, the thought of her and my father feeling all sexy didn't please me much at all. She went on,
"It's a strange thing to admit, but I don't know if your father loved me right at first, I mean deeply, romantically, the way you always hear about. I don't know if he was capable of that kind of love. Maybe it's too intellectual. Perhaps he just came to accept me.
"I don't know if he had been with other women before we married; I suppose so. That was the kind of life he'd led up to that point, and neither of us was that young. I was a virgin, of course, and he was very tender with me for such a big, physical man. He always seemed to have such insight about my moods and could bring me around, so that sex was wonderful with him, right from the first time. He was always patient and calm with me, at least in that regard."
This was getting really obnoxious. Maybe she thought that since I’d had the experience she could open up to me, but I wasn’t ready for that. Almost involuntarily I got up and turned toward the windows. The trees around the cabin had grown taller, but the view over the lake was still open and spectacular. Behind me, my mother's voice continued for a while, then trailed off.
I turned back. She watched me with a strange expression - something between hurt and embarrassment. I sat again. It was quiet for a while. Then I said,
"I think you're wrong about Grandpa."
''What?”
"When I was a kid, sometimes it made me mad the way Grandpa talked to Pa, like he was a little kid or something."
"Well, there, that's just what I was saying."
"But lately I've thought a lot about that. I think it was some kind of code between them, some way that Grandpa brought Pa back when he'd gone too far. After Grandpa died I guess no one could do that for him."
Her face darkened at that.
"A code? Well, of course, you might see it like that. Children play code games, but we're talking about adults, and I lived with my husband and my father much longer than you did. I guess I knew them well enough."
"Did Pa ever talk to you about seeing things?"
"What do you mean?"
"About seeing things, like things from the past or things that hadn't happened yet. I don't mean remembering or imagining; I mean seeing, like the things were really happening, were really there." I could see this made her nervous.
"I've told you what I think about that. Your father had a very bad childhood, I'm sure. His work was his escape from those memories, but he was capable of such concentration that sometimes he'd lose track of time or things around him."
"Or people around him?"
"Or people. A person might think he was in some kind of trance."
"But did he ever try to talk to you about what I said - about...about... visions?"
She studied me with pained eyes, afraid to ask the question that was forming, about how I knew about that. Finally she blurted,
"Maybe he did, maybe he did," then stronger, "I just don't want to think about that. It belongs to things that are beyond humans - things that men shouldn't get involved in."
"But if it's something a person can't help - if it's something that just happens to you because of who you are?"
"Then it should be resisted with every strength that person has."
"You mean you should deny your own self?"
A shadow formed over her brow. It was the visor, still open, but poised. She looked older than before.
"Andy, my life the last ten years has been like one long punishment. One by one my family has been taken from me until you are the only one left. I don't want our life to be one long fight. I just hoped we could still talk like we used to - like the times we were all happy together."
"I'm the only one left? What about Danny? You talk like he was dead, too."
"Danny's like your father - we just don't communicate."
Things were very quiet as that sank in for both of us. Finally, I said,
"I thought you said you really knew Pa."
Outside the day had grown brighter, but a cool wind, at times gusting up, whistled through the screen door, foretelling the changing season. Inside, the shadow moved lower over my mother's face.
"Maybe I knew my mother better," she said. "She's the only one in this family I could really talk to - who gave me the words I needed. Do you want to know what she told me?"
I waited.
"She told me that no matter what horrors or sadness life brings you, if you concentrate on it, you can put anything out of your mind."
I sat back even more amazed.
"That's it? You can forget anything? That's your formula for happiness?"
"Andy."
The image of the great eraser falling endlessly through the pages formed itself to me. And I thought it had come from my father. A rage built. Here was a woman who never threw out things but who could vacuum her mind whenever it suited her.
"You spend your life learning things so you can forget them? What happens if you wipe out your whole mind before it's time to die? Does your head slowly disappear from the inside out? These are words for life? You're telling me how to die!"
“Andy!”
I stopped. She looked as though she'd been slapped hard, but covered it quickly. Carefully she collected the dirty plates and silver and arranged them neatly before her.
“I had hoped that there was still some way for us...but I guess not. I'm leaving for Glendale tomorrow morning. I want you to go with me.”
“I want to stay here.”
“The summer's over. I'm sure they can manage without you. You could help me drive. You don't want to take the bus, do you?”
“I don't want to go to Glendale at all. I can't stand that school again - or those kids.”
“And what will you do here?”
"I'll go to school - work for Frank.”
"You've told him this?"
“No, but I will.”
“He'll be delighted, I'm sure.”
Now the visor descended and closed firmly and finally with a precise little clink. When she looked up her manner was totally changed.
“Now I will tell you this only once,” she said. “Tomorrow morning I will leave at 9:30. That gives you plenty of time to arrange things. If you don't go with me, do not consider my house to be your home anymore."
There was nothing more for it. I got up and went to the door. Then I turned. She still sat at the table, her face drained, calm, passionless - the banker at her desk after her latest foreclosure.
"I know one thing you've definitely got wrong," I said. "Danny's like you; I'm like my father."

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