Her mother and sister, the fence and landing strip are gone. The sky is an immaculate blue like the painted capes of certain saints on cathedral walls. Megan knows women are traditionally traded for a string of beads and a few cows, a horse, maybe. Where is the surprise in this? It is a perpetual cycle of poor harvests when you consider drowning the girl children.
Of course, rumors persist. There are ambiguous disappearances. A woman here or there invents techniques to elude detection and escape the compound. There are trails in mountains and methods to extract water from cactus. Some women scale the walls and reap years of fortunate seasons. They don’t count livestock, measure grain or define themselves by harvests and droughts, floods and contagion. They refuse to save discarded fabrics like they were holy relics. Some women reject induction into the society of females who stitch quilts. They change their names and destinies, slip off their shoes at 27,000 feet, ask for a scotch on the rocks, close their eyes and wake up in another millennium.
COCKTAIL HOUR
Bernie Roth is not going to get his twenty-year service plaque in the lobby. The hospital he founded has been purchased by Westec Medical Division. Bernie Roth is merely the former figurehead of an ad hoc insurrection that has no meaning in the realm of litigation. The project coordinator makes it clear that his presence is unnecessary, in fact, it’s intolerable.
He leaves the merger meeting three days early. Bernie Roth takes a midnight flight and his green-tinted contact lenses sting as he drives from the airport directly home. The house is perched on a cliff of purple succulents above the ocean that is, today, a dark blue like certain fabrics where you see the grain and stitches.
Chloe designed their house with an architect from Milan. It’s a three-story Mediterranean villa with arches, balconies, a turret, orange tiles on the roof, and graceful windows of leaded glass that face interior courtyards enclosed by Bougainvillea draped walls. And it’s not painted pink, Chloe has meticulously explained. It’s a salmon terra cotta.
Chloe’s car is in the driveway. It’s a weekday and she should be out. He notices her car with surprise and relief, realizing that if she hadn’t been home, he would have called her and asked her to return immediately.
He finds Chloe in the bedroom, standing inside her closet, apparently arranging clothing. She is wearing a silk kimono imprinted with red Peonies, her blond hair is tied back in a ponytail and she seems startled to see him. She actually touches two fingers to her throat in a gesture of surprise when she looks up, and her mouth is momentarily wide. He starts to embrace her but, but for some reason, stops, and lays down on the bed instead.
“You’re three days early,” Chloe says. There’s something accusatory in her tone.
“I was invited to leave,” Bernie explains, prone. “I’m not getting my plaque.”
“Why not?” Chloe asks. She glances at him, briefly, then continues moving clothing through the 120 square feet of her cedar closet.
Spring-cleaning is inappropriate, he decides. Insulting and dismissive. Bernie wants a scotch and he wants her to lay down with him, in that order, now.
“Their focus groups don’t like plaques. It reminds the consumer of death. Their lobbies are strictly ferns with central gravel fountains. They’re identical, like McDonald’s.” He closes his eyes.
Bernie waits for Chloe to offer consolation. A drink and a quick tennis game, perhaps. It’s still early. They could have lunch, walk on the beach. Then he could tell her his joke. Westec Medical Division. WMD. See, there are weapons of mass destruction, after all. They’re just not in Baghdad. They’re in La Jolla.
Bernie Roth is aware of an agitating interference in the room. He must remove his contacts. His vision is blurred and scratchy, as if his eyes are being clawed. “What are you doing?” he asks.
“I’m packing, Bernie. I’m not getting my plaque, either. I intended to be gone before you got back.” Chloe resumes her closet activities.
He sees now, the selected dresses and suits and skirts hanging in one area, an assembly of shoes and purses already on the bedroom floor below the French windows leading to the mahogany bedroom terrace. Her entire set of luggage is in the corner, garment bags, cosmetic cases and assorted carry-ons. The suitcases are nearly filled.
“Where are you going?” Bernie sits up. Is this an unscheduled Book Club related journey? A prize-winning poet must be fetched at an airport and properly entertained? Is there a problem with the children? Maybe he needs a scotch and a cup of coffee.
“I’m just going, Bernie. That’s the point. Not where.” Chloe pauses. “I’m leaving you. This. Us. La Jolla. I’m through.”
“You’re leaving me? As in a separation? A divorce?” Bernie stares at her. “Now?”
“Affirmative. Sorry about the scheduling. But it’s always something. The siege of festivities. Christmas. Birthdays. Valentine’s Day. Our anniversary. Departures tend to be awkward.” Chloe looks directly at him. “Can you give me an hour or so to wrap it up here?”
“Wrap it up here? What is this? A movie set? You’re divorcing me and you want me to leave our bedroom now?” Bernie repeats.
He examines the bedroom as if he’s never quite seen it before. Their bed has four oak posts supporting a yellow brocade canopy. The walls are an ochre intended to suggest aged stucco. Ochre, not yellow. A stone kiva fireplace is dead center across from the bed. Navajo rugs lay over glazed orange Spanish tiles. The ceiling is a sequence of Douglas fir beams somehow procured from a derelict church in New Mexico. Bernie assumes her decorator hires bandits. An elaborate copper and glass chandelier with a history involving Gold Rush opera theaters and saloons hangs suspended from the middle of the beams. Chloe insisted it was necessary, despite the earthquake hazard. It was essential for what did she call it? The hybrid Pueblo Revival style?
“I have a list and this is confusing. Yes. Why don’t you make yourself a drink? I’ll join you downstairs in a bit, OK?” It’s not a question.
“Isn’t this sudden? I’ve been preoccupied with the merger, but—” he begins.
“Actually, it’s a coincidence. It doesn’t really have to do with you,” Chloe says, over her shoulder.
She extracts a pair of fire-engine red high-heel shoes. She holds them in her hands, as if determining their possible flammability. Or is she weighing them? Is she taking a special flight? Are there baggage limitations? Is she going on safari?
“We’ve been married twenty-four years. I must have some involvement.” Bernie entertains the notion that this is a ghastly practical joke, or the consequence of an anomalous miscommunication. A faulty computer transmitting a garbled fax designed for someone else entirely, perhaps.
Chloe is within her fortress of closet, on her knees, nonchalantly evaluating pocketbooks and shoes with both hands. She does have a list, he notices that now, and a pen where she checks off and crosses out items. She’s also listening to music. Bob Dylan live, he decides. It’s her favorite, the Rolling Thunder tour. Or the other one she plays incessantly, Blood on the Tracks. They made a pact when Irving and Natalie went to college. She would not play Bob Dylan in his presence. In return, he would not subject her to John Coltrane or Monk. No Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker, either. Chloe deems his music agitating. In fact, his entire jazz collection is, by agreement, kept in his study, as if they were vials of pathogens. Or slides of children with pre-op facial deformities.
Bernie stares at her back for an arrested moment, in which time simultaneously elongates and compresses. Then he pushes himself up from the embroidered damask pillows with their intimidating wavy rims of thick silk ribbons requiring handling so specialized he fears them, stands unsteadily, and walks downstairs to the kitchen. He pours scotch into a water glass.