Elisabeth was not married, of course, nothing as sensible as that. And his widowed mother – silly old woman! What was she doing, still walking around outside at her age, with her joints? The whole point of her moving closer to them had been to keep her safe, but she hadn’t kept her part of the bargain. What did mother and daughter expect from him now? Endless hospital visits, flowers, money, babysitting? Milly was already the millstoniest wife in the county, with her limp and her lack of driving licence and her refusal to divorce him on the grounds that she still loved him. When was his time going to come? He had a life too, goddammit, and he was tired of thinking of other people all the time. He was fifty-fucking-nine, for fuck’s sake.
‘So, Dad, you’ll be a grandpa. Pretty cool, eh?’
‘No one’s calling me grandpa.’
‘Okay. What do you want to be called?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ His eyes fell on a mouldy baseball, forgotten under the hedge. He had a soft spot for baseball. It was easy to understand.
‘Baseball. He can call me Baseball.’
‘It might be a girl.’
‘I’ve got to warn you, honey. Kids are a mixed blessing.’
‘Not exactly what I want to hear at this stage, Dad.’
‘Break your heart, kids.’
He sighed dramatically. She had a biology degree from Cal. She used to talk about becoming a doctor. He’d always visualised her marrying and raising a family in a house on the Bay, maybe in Tiburon or leafy Ross. Last he heard, she didn’t even have a boyfriend, just rented a room on Miracle Mile and worked in Peet’s. But he’d always enjoyed confiding in Elisabeth because, while her choices puzzled him, he sensed a rapport with her. She didn’t judge. If they’d been drinking, he became expansive and told her all his secrets. It felt great. Though Milly felt excluded and once said, ‘Goodness sake, Jack!’ when he told her he’d more in common with Elisabeth than he did with her. ‘Why are you surprised?’ he’d asked. ‘We are blood related, after all. You and I are merely married.’
Though now things were shifting. Pregnancy seemed to take Elisabeth over. Overnight, she lost her edgy, intelligent look. He could see the matronly, literal-minded woman she would be become, just like he could sometimes see the cranky old woman Milly would become. Especially first thing in the morning, when her face was wrinkled from sleeping on her side. Those pillow lines used to last a minute – now sometimes she kept them till lunch. He supposed his face was going the same way. His rear-view mirror had certainly given him a shock earlier today.
They went to the hospital to visit his mother. Milly, Jack, and pregnant unmarried Elisabeth. She brought a Hallmark Get Well card, a Chicken Soup novel, and some home-made oatmeal cookies. Jack and Milly agreed on this: nice though the cookies tasted, it was hard not to prefer the old selfish, wise-cracking daughter. They’d not agreed on anything for so long, it was a surprising aphrodisiac. They exchanged vomiting mimicry behind Elisabeth’s back, while she was propping up her grandmother’s pillows and combing her hair.
‘There you go, Gran!’ Holding the mirror for her. ‘Prettiest girl in the…ward. I know, will we say a prayer together? You’ll be missing Mass, won’t you. Let’s say the Lord’s Prayer together.’
Jack and Milly froze, not looking at each other. But when she brought her nicotine-stained fingers together to pray, it was too much.
‘What’re you two laughing about?’
They couldn’t answer. In fact, they could hardly breathe. They wheezed and sprayed spittle and rocked on their chairs.
‘I think that’s enough prayer,’ said Grandma MacAlister. ‘Thank you very much. Bit tired now, do you mind, Elisabeth?’ But her mouth was twitching with a bewildered smile too, as if she was thinking: was every family as odd as hers? How wonderful!
‘Tell your sister to come home, Jack. It’s time.’
‘I phoned her. She said she’d try to come next week.’
‘Huh! I’ll believe it when I see it. Ivy hasn’t been home in…I can’t remember how long.’
‘She’s never been back, Mom.’
‘Huh!’
‘My sister’s never been back either,’ said Milly.
‘What’s wrong with these girls?’ said the old lady. ‘It’s like they’ve slipped into other orbits or something.’
‘I blame men,’ said Milly.
‘You would,’ said Jack. ‘See you tomorrow, Mom.’
‘Sure. If I’m still alive.’
‘Stop it, Mom.’
‘What? I know it’s a cliché, but life goes just like that!’ She clicked her fingers, once, twice, three times. ‘It’s fast! Short! Over, just when you’re getting the hang of it.’
And out they trooped, after planting a row of kisses on her thin dry skin. They took Elisabeth home to her purple hippie house, which she shared with five Sufi dancers. They were often silent with each other, Milly and Jack. Often, there was a tension to their silence. A grudging thick silence, like stale hard fudge. But now, the silence was exquisite. Full of suppressed mirth and more. An unexpected intimacy. Reluctant to drop anything remotely unpleasant into it – they’d both forgotten how to be friendly to each other in the normal way, and the old mechanics of flirtation were long gone – they prolonged the silence. Then:
‘Can we go to Bolinas Beach on the way home?’
‘Yeah. Great idea,’ said Jack instantly, and signalled to take the coastal route. It was not on the way home at all, but he didn’t point that out.
It was not a beautiful day. The sky was hazy, the light flat. The world looked jaded. They entered the town, passed the church where they got married, the café selling oysters in the shell, Smiley’s Bar, weather-beaten houses and sheds. No traffic at all today. Once at the beach, parked directly facing the surf, Jack pulled on the handbrake and they both sighed at the same time. Because there it still was. That old Pacific. Serious, freezing, noisy. Often impatient, churning, but right now ebbing, and the smaller waves lapped quickly, unevenly. Just beyond the breakers, the rip tide was clearly visible, a fault line of choppy water. The twice-daily argument it had with itself. In or out? Make up your mind! Milly rolled her window down.
‘Well! Beautiful,’ she declared softly. ‘Wish we’d brought Scout. Truman used to love this beach, remember? Scout’s never even been.’
‘Well, he’s only a few months old. Do you want to get out of the car?’
‘No.’
‘You do, though. Don’t you?’
‘Of course.’ Eyebrow began to cock.
‘Well, come on then. I’ll help you.’
