‘How. Can. You. Expect. Me. To. Write. On. Demand?’
Jack had found a box of Kleenex and passed it over.
‘Um. Because you agreed to? When we paid you $125,000 last year?’
‘I. Am. Not. A. Machine.’
Oh, some days Jack hated writers. Hated books. Hated the whole shebang. He could not wait to get on the ferry, take that first sip of cold chardonnay out on the back deck and light up a cigarette. Even while he was worried about getting vertigo again, he wondered if Cheryl would be there, wearing that beige dress with the zip down the front. Sure, she was popular, but it must be obvious to everyone, she preferred Jack’s company. They shared a love of hiking and Jack London.
Then the sidewalk beneath his feet rolled – he felt it, a wave starting from his toes to his heels. People were stopping, looking up with startled faces at the buildings either side of Market Street. Embarcadero and the harbour were only a few blocks away, and people started running there. They wove between the slowly moving cars and Muni buses. When he understood it was an earthquake, a strange elation crept over him. A kind of tickling, drizzling through his body. By God, this was it! Something big, beyond anyone’s control. Like when he was sailing and the wind suddenly changed direction, the sea began to boil in huge swells, and the tiller needed all his strength just to hold course. He instinctively moved off the sidewalk, away from the buildings, but didn’t join the running crowds yet. Then, for no obvious reason, he remembered walking along Market Street more than forty years ago. Walking this very block, in his three-week-old army uniform, with Ernie walking alongside him in his own three-week-old uniform. Did they look fine? Some pretty girls thought so. A group of giggling girls, in pencil skirts and frilly blouses, wolf-whistled them by the Geary intersection. Clear as day, he all at once saw himself and Ernie as those girls must have seen them. Young soldiers, off to fight the Huns and Nips. Slim-hipped boys, swaggering. No two ways about it, army uniforms were sexy, and green was his best colour. Where were the street photographers when you wanted them?
How strange, for that memory to be slicing into this particular moment. As if the quake had opened a crevice in his mind. Or this particular spot – yes, this might be the exact spot – had suddenly been exposed as layers of history, and naturally he had access to the slice of history that contained his own self.
All that took three seconds.
A woman slammed on her brakes right in front of him, jumped out of her car and started running towards the bay. Jack noticed she left her car door open and the engine running. Linda Ronstadt was playing loudly on her cassette player. Love is a rose but you better not pick it, only grows when it’s on the vine.
‘Well, will you look at that!’ he said out loud. ‘Hot dog!’ Boy oh boy, he hadn’t said hot dog in a long time. Goddammit, he hadn’t said boy oh boy in a long time either. What the fuck was happening? Even as he found himself automatically following her, a part of his mind was trying to remember who did that song originally. The rolling seemed to be over. No Muni buses moving, which was eerie, and the sound of sirens and running footsteps, and of course, the sound of people panicking. Hard breathing, shouting, running footsteps. Not a lot of talking. The occasional female squeal. He didn’t feel afraid, or much of anything. In fact, he felt quite detached, walking swiftly with the other workers.
These observations took seven seconds.
Irrelevantly, he thought about the meeting with Mark Fiordinski again, and what to tell them on Monday. As if his office would still be there, and his editors still preoccupied with such things as marketing targets and book launch dates. He hurried – worried he’d miss his ferry. As if there would still be a 5:20 ferry. As if all these commuters would be able to get on it.
He couldn’t seem to catch up with what was happening. Most days, life felt like he was in the driver’s seat, driving himself and his family to a chosen destination, and all the road signs matched the map. And other days, like this one, he felt that life was something he was being yanked through, willy-nilly, and all he could do was keep breathing in and out, and squeeze his eyes tight shut when he had the chance. Like that day his dad had dropped him and Ernie off on the Russian River. It’d been late August, just before sophomore year. Armed with two old rubber tyres and dressed in nothing but their swimming trunks, the plan had been to float down the river half a mile, where they’d be met by friends. Within a half hour they’d realised they were nowhere near their destination. That in fact, they’d asked to be dropped off at the wrong point. The sun had been intense, but that hadn’t been the main problem. The river itself was faster than they’d anticipated and sometimes their bottoms scraped jagged rocks just under the surface. They had no paddles, no control, and at first they’d caught each other’s eyes and laughed – what an adventure! But soon, they’d grown weary and their bottoms had hurt. They spun round in sudden eddies, edged over small rapids, held on for dear life over bigger rapids. No time or chance to pee, and their stomachs had begun to growl. Around every bend, they’d looked hopefully for familiar sights. And that was what this day felt like. The world was tilting, and nothing was the same. He was sixty-two. Yes, he felt more alive now, but goddammit he needed to pee again, and that made him cranky.
Three seconds had gone to the river memory.
By the time he got to the Embarcadero, he was telling himself: So, it’s not a normal Tuesday evening after all, and all those plans for flirting with Cheryl over a glass of Chardonnay on the ferry had to be scuppered. He mentally shrugged. He reverted to anxiety about work. He’d have to remind Madge to check with Bookstop and Cody’s, because he was betting nothing sent today would get delivered. He thought (calmly) that things would be in chaos for weeks. He’d need to make calls to Seattle and New York and London, reorganise things. Maybe look up Cheryl’s name in the phone book, aim for the next phase. Get past this delicious and tortuous phase of accidental meetings? No, let it ride, he decided. The older he got the more time he had for innocence.
Two more seconds had passed. He was about to cross the road to the ferry building now.
He decided, while crossing, he needed to visit Colette soon. A heart to heart with Colette about August was overdue. What was wrong with that boy? His fifth arrest since he turned eighteen! The smoking grass part Jack could forgive, but the getting busted part – that was just dumb. And a heart to heart with Colette about Cheryl too, come to think of it. He’d already told her about the time Cheryl raised her arms too suddenly and her blouse buttons flew off. Things hadn’t really happened till he’d told Colette; she understood everything. Especially she understood the humour. She was single again but sex was permanently off the agenda, thank God. No two ways about it: an unmarried woman one could not screw made the best friend.
Four seconds gone, and he reached the dock in time to watch his ferry leave. It was so loaded with people, it didn’t look safe. But the ferry service had acted quickly and another ferry soon docked. He was swept on board with the crowd. He was wearing his usual khaki pants, yellow Brooks Brothers shirt and Rockport brogues, and he carried a battered leather briefcase. His hair was still thick and dark, the cowlicks still boyish, and his corduroy jacket was attractively loose. The ferry bar was open, but the lines were daunting. He scanned the crowd. Everyone seemed to be talking at the same time, squeezed up, everyone touching at least four other people. When he tuned in to the conversations, he noticed some people were talking about what just happened to them, but mostly people were wondering what was happening to their own homes. They’d heard rumours, ominous rumours of fires and collapsed buildings. As he listened, he thought of his own house and his wife inside it. Was she in the kitchen? Since their youngest had left home, dinner time was less sacrosanct. Milly had dinner on the table anytime between 6:00 and 9:00. There’d been a time when she’d change into something pretty for him, wear lipstick every evening, light candles at the table, but these days she seemed…well, a bit mopey. Oh for God’s sake, he was not going to waste a second wondering about that.
What Milly was doing, in fact, was sitting in the living room watching the news. She always had the radio on in the kitchen, which was how she’d known to turn on the television news. San Miguel was not on the San Andreas Fault, and she’d felt no tremors. The dogs had been acting a little restless, but then settled down again. She’d been about to make meatloaf, with bread crumbs and onions and egg, to stretch out the quarter-pound of ground beef she found in the freezer this morning. The week’s grocery money ran out yesterday because she’d secretly sent money to August and Danny again. Budget night was Friday, in three days. This always made her angry even before Jack sat down with the chequebook stubs, and his pencil and paper. The third Friday of every month, they fought about money. Well, other times too, but this was a scheduled argument. A fight date.
But now she prayed her husband was not dead. The top tier of an Oakland freeway had just collapsed on to the lower, and the people who had not died immediately were screaming and begging the people below.
‘Please! Help me!’
‘Someone tell my husband the boys are still at Little League!’
A woman holding a small dog over the edge called out frantically: ‘Catch my dog someone, please. His name is Lucky!’
Milly flinched; their pleas were so thin somehow, and hopeless. It seemed voyeuristic, rude, to be sitting safely in her chair watching dying strangers. Not actors, not a hundred years ago. Real people, crying for help, now. She tried phoning the children, but couldn’t get a dial tone. Had the quake affected the phone? Her house suddenly felt isolated. She felt isolated. She wished the children were here, and were children again. They’d all moved out in such dribs and drabs. The boys had moved back every summer from college, till one summer she realised the boys’ room only contained their least loved clothes and shoes. Elisabeth had moved back home three times, when she was out of work or a relationship ended. Billy still came home on semester breaks, and sometimes the others came back to stay a few days or weeks, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps that was why she’d never been sure when a last time was a last time. Once, while visiting Elisabeth and eating lunch in a restaurant, her daughter suddenly leapt up, said: ‘Oh! Late for work, got to dash, see you, Mom!’ She’d been so pretty, so happy, running back off to her life – and that was when Milly had finally realised (with a startling tearfulness) Elisabeth had really moved out for good.
She fed Scout and Mackie, and because her children were no longer children, and because she could not help the people on the collapsed freeway, and because Jack was late, she gave the dogs a whole can each. When they were finished, she stroked each of them and said good boy several times.
Her lapsed Catholic soul resurged. Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day, our daily bread. Give me Jack – bring him home safely.
When had they stopped going to Sunday Mass? Sometime just before Billy left home. No discussion or major decision, the habit had just faded away. First missing one Mass a month, then a whole month of no Mass, then it became normal to do other things Sunday morning. Then they heard the priest they’d liked had moved parish, and somehow that liberated them from returning to church at all.
She went back to perching on the sofa arm, watching
television. A hand-held video recorder was cutting down Market Street. Panned down past the Hyatt Regency. Something echoed with Milly in this scene, and it came to her slowly – because this was one of those foggy days – that it was the corner where that book store used to be. Paul Elder’s Books, with the arched doorway. Yes! Jack had loved it there, and spent hours choosing which book to buy, then they’d sit in a coffee shop or bar afterwards to talk and read. She remembered his yellow cashmere V-neck. He’d been so skinny his pants had bunched up under his belt like a kid’s.
She couldn’t think of a single bad thing about Jack, because she had suddenly leapt to widowhood. She was wishing with all her grief-stricken heart that she could argue about the housekeeping money with her husband just one more time. She’d do anything to hear him say: ‘Goddammit, Milly! What do you mean, you don’t remember what you spent $12.79 on at Macy’s on September 27th?’ To have him throw open the front door and say: ‘Just a joke, hon, here I am. Not dead at all.’
Jack spotted someone he knew, who waved as if he was glad to see him. He made his way over to this man, and it turned out his whole ferry gang had made it on to this ferry too. Someone had bought two bottles of chardonnay from the bar, and soon they were passing bottles around – no glasses – and laughing hysterically about nothing at all. In fact, the whole ferry had become an uninhibited party. And, oh sweet Jesus, was that Cheryl waving to him from the deck?
He felt as if he was finally getting into his stride. That up till now he’d been practising how to live, how to respond to things. Now he got it. All you had to do was not care.
Tears, prayers and the meatloaf mixture sat on the kitchen counter, with the flies having a heyday. This was one of the best days of Jack MacAlister’s late middle-aged life, and Milly was rehearsing her eulogy for him. Also, choosing what to wear. Her black linen with the narrow black belt? Her brown tweed two-piece, if it was a cold day. With that cream silk blouse. Where was that blouse? Been ages since she’d seen it. She turned off the television to go look for it. He’d better not have given it to Goodwill. Gosh darn that man for always getting rid of her stuff.
GLENN MILLER DIED TOO
FOUR YEARS EARLIER
May 2nd 1985
San Miguel, Marin County 2:10pm
At twenty-five, even forty, Jack regarded people in their sixties as an inferior race. Getting that old was just plain rude, he often joked. Loose skin around the ear lobes was never going to happen to him, goddammit it.
But he must have taken his eye off the ball a few minutes, because: bingo! Jack MacAlister was now fifty-fucking-nine, and life expectancy for an American man was now seventy-four. That was sixteen more years. Christ. Without his glasses, in the bedroom mirror lit only by the flattering low lamp, he was still okay. Just. When he was out on his bike, heading down the grade towards China Camp with the bay sparkling and the warm eucalyptus air rushing around him like…like a beautiful sexy madness (he’d been reading Kerouac again), well then, he was no age at all. Just his own self, the self he’d been since he could remember. Jacko MacAlister. And the whole world was as drunk on its own beauty and stupidity as it’d always been. But when he caught a glimpse of himself in the rear-view mirror while driving on a sunny day – well! Fuck off, he told his reflection. And usually refused to glance again, preferring the side mirror. Often drove faster in this mood. Passed on curves. Death, you asshole, come get me!
Then, as if mortality wasn’t already breathing its nasty breath down his neck, Elisabeth, who was thirty-three, announced she was six months pregnant and two days later his mother fell, broke her hip and within days developed pneumonia.
Perfect.
