I waited for you to say you were joking, and when you didn’t, I said, “That’s a baseball, Dad.”
“Baseball,” you repeated.
“Baseball gloves,” I said. “Baseball bat, baseball diamond.”
“Gloves, bat, diamond,” you repeated, like this was a game, like this was rock, paper, scissors.
August
Today you washed your shoelaces.
Today you spoon-fed the neighbor’s cat tuna from a can.
You’ve been eating the bananas too early, the ones that are spotless and still tinged green. I’ve taken to hiding a few from each bunch in the seat of the piano bench, but as of just now you’ve located this secret banana stash.
“Annie!” you marveled to Mom. “There’s fruit inside this seat!”
Today I cooked clams, which I’d never done before. I read you’re supposed to put them in water and throw in a handful of cornmeal, to encourage them to spit out their dirt, was what I read. The clams spat and spat, coughing, like they were afflicted with tiny clam colds.
Today you disappeared again, and scared the shit out of us.
This morning, when I called into your study, ready to hand you a mug of coffee, you didn’t answer. I knocked, and when I opened the door you weren’t there. Linus and I walked once around the block, then twice. I called Mom and told her not to panic, but she did. She found a substitute for herself, the substitute. We drove around and around and around the neighborhood, yelling HOWARD and DAD and not seeing you anywhere. We did this for three hours, so scared.
We would get home and call the police, we thought. But when we got home, there you were. We didn’t know whether to be angry or to be relieved. Your nails had been painted silver. Your nails caught the light and they sparkled.
Today Mom brought home a heavy melon. You could smell how sweet it was from the outside, which was cracked. We each ate a quarter of a melon.
It was my first in years, because Joel couldn’t stand cantaloupe.
Cantaloupe—it’s delicious. I’d forgotten.
Today you told me that the Santa Ana winds are sometimes called the “devil winds.” When they blow, the police department reports increases in domestic abuse and homicides. On TV, we see fires tearing over hills, fueled by dried-out vegetation.
At home, a confused wren throws its body, over and over, against the kitchen window. He sits on the sill, casts a puzzled glance, and tries again and again.
You blamed the wind. Linus and I drew straws to see which of us would deal with the body. It was like a toy, it was so small.
This morning Bonnie called to tell me about a fight she got into with Vince, and she said, “I blame the moon and the margaritas.” The moon was full and planetary forces were in opposition, bringing confrontation to relationships, she said.
When the earthquake came it was 5.2 on the Richter scale. But you seemed not to even notice, like we were on a flight and simply experiencing regular turbulence. The epicenter was Brea. There were aftershocks for a week, and then nothing.
Whether the moon or the margaritas, Vince broke up with Bonnie last week, for inarticulate reasons, and she was quietly mourning. This was what, she said, she had wanted all along—but still.
On a Sunday, I surprised her at her apartment. Bonnie was in her glasses and pajamas. She had lopped her own hair into the tiniest pixie cut and looked striking. She yawned opening the door.
“Let’s go,” I said.
She got in the car and I drove. Outside it was hot, one hundred degrees at least, maybe more. We refilled our bottles with water from gas station bathrooms. In one of the bathrooms, a woman was hand-feeding her rabbit, through the grating on a cat carrier. At one of the gas stations, Bonnie filled her water bottle with blue slushie.
We stopped in Hadley for date shakes and, in Palm Springs, we checked into a motel that was supposedly a former mission. We watched the Home Shopping Network and thought about spending all our money on tennis bracelets because it was true, they looked very pretty in the studio lighting.
When I was little I thought that tennis bracelets were called tennis bracelets because the average wrist was the circumference of a tennis ball. Even while believing it, I had the feeling that it wasn’t true. The saleswoman on the television now explained that in 1987, the tennis player Chris Evert was wearing a diamond bracelet, and in the middle of the match the bracelet broke, and they stopped the game so all of the diamonds could be recovered.
When the sun came up in the morning we saw our sunburned arms more clearly: my left and Bonnie’s right. When I pressed her arm it turned white. I pressed “HI” and watched it fade. She pressed a sad face.
“What’s a hairdresser’s favorite herb?” I said.
“I don’t know. What?”
“Cilantro.”
“What?”
“It’s in how you say it. Salon-tro.”
“Ha ha,” she said finally, and smiled for me.
We had written swear words on the dirty car and on the drive back the sun shone in a lovely way through the clear-lettered swears.
Today you and I sanded the patio. We each had hand sanders going, to cover ground faster. We’re wearing goggles and earplugs and when Mom shouted at us about dinner we didn’t hear it or see her. We sanded it down and then we wiped off the sawdust with tack cloth and our hands were still sticky when we ate dinner. They stuck to our forks. We shook our hands and they stuck.
Today was so hot that Bonnie, Linus, and I found the old kiddie pool, rinsed it out with the hose, and sat together in just our swim bottoms in the cold, shallow water until it warmed, at which point we’d top ourselves off with more cold water from the hose. Dad was out with Theo, and Bonnie had brought contraband vodka, so we mixed Kool-Aid with the vodka in a big thermos. Our mission was to drink it all, destroy the evidence.
After that we climbed the ladder to the top of Dad’s half-painted patio cover, and lay on our backs to dry, on the partially pink slats. Bonnie curled up next to Linus, who was propped drowsily on an elbow, clutching, in his free hand, the bulb of his Kool-Aid–filled wineglass.
It had reached the point in the day when Linus started talking about teleportation. It was what he always wound up talking about after a certain number of drinks. I always wound up talking about whales. An amazing thing I can’t really get over is that their shit isn’t solid, but liquid. Also it’s nutritious.
“Another weird thing is that pigs don’t get milked,” I said. “We don’t have pig milk.”
“Because piglets drink it all?” Bonnie said.
“Because piglets drink it all.”
“There’s something beautiful about that,” Linus said, “beautiful and perfect.”
We toasted to piglets and didn’t notice Theo approach.
“What’s happening up there?” he yelled, startling Linus, who nearly fell off.
“Who are you?” Bonnie called, at first. Then, deciding she didn’t care, she said, “Drink the Kool-Aid!”
Of course I said nothing, like an idiot. My fear was a bratwurst: sobering.
“How was the Home Depot?” asked Linus. You had wanted to spend a gift card.