Jerry Strauss is carrying around what he calls a formal letter of protest, trying rather confrontationally to persuade everyone to sign it. Most have; those who refuse have a hard time with him.
It’s about your fucking freedom! he says. Does that mean so little to you?
Look, Daniel told him. (Daniel is one of the few people who dares to stand up to him.) A letter of protest, what’s that? Will it do anything? Will he reconsider?
If we’re all together on it—
Of course he won’t. This place is not a democracy. And I’m glad it’s not. Has he been wrong about anything yet?
He’s wrong about this. Ever since he brought back the goddamn Madwoman in the Attic up there—
He’s not wrong about it. That film of Elaine’s, God knows I love her, but that was a piece of shit, and he was dead-on right about why. I’m not going to the barricades over something like that. It’s childish.
You know, Jerry said, holding the typed letter a little too tightly in his hand, this really only means something if every name here is on it.
And why is that, if you value your independence so much? You’re just trying to have it both ways, to pretend you’re a rebel and still cover your ass. All you’ll do is make yourself feel better in the most superficial way. A petition! It’s like something you’d do in fucking high school.
Goddamn coward, Jerry said. Just admit that you’re too afraid of losing your job.
Admit it? Daniel said, laughing. Of course I want to keep my job! It’s nothing to admit! This is the best job in the history of the world. What, Jerry, do you want to go back to publishing zines and working at Kinko’s?
Elaine is never a part of these conversations that I can see. I guess the thinking is that she’s still too upset. Discretion keeps me from asking them, just as a way of taking part, if they know where she’s sleeping now. Her stuff has disappeared from my room.
* * *
THE HOUSE WAS a simple white condo with a split-rail fence in front, and a withered-looking garden on the side not shadowed by the rim of the valley. It was mid-afternoon but it seemed much later there; all the lights were on inside. No one else was in sight. The sky was a kind of bleached blue, one of those early spring days that seem surprisingly cold, unfairly cold.
I thought you were in there. I rang the doorbell, waited, rang it again. It was possible that all those blazing lights were on some sort of theft-deterring automatic timer, but just as that occurred to me, I saw someone moving, through the filmy curtain over the narrow window beside the door. Someone walked right through my field of vision and out of it again, without so much as a hitch in her step or a glance toward the door.
I knocked, even though I had heard the doorbell ringing in the house. Finally, crazed with the thought that you were inside, I jumped over the railing at the end of the porch and walked around to stand in the garden, the direction in which that figure had traveled. I found myself at about chin level with the sill of the kitchen window.
This was your mother; that much was obvious. Her gray hair was in a bun, and she wore a blue pants suit (maybe she went to an office on weekends, I thought), but she had that same mouth, that same smooth, too-fair skin. I knocked on the kitchen window and this time she heard me, though she didn’t jump or scream, as well she might have under the circumstances. She smiled at me as if this were the most natural thing in the world, to find a stranger staring and knocking at you on the other side of the kitchen window. Then she left the room. Maybe she’s phoning the police, I thought, chinning myself on the windowsill to try to see further into the house; but then I heard the front door open at last, and a maternal voice chirped, May I help you with something?
With all the good manners I could muster, I walked around the railing and back up the porch stairs, brushing dirt off my pants.
Are you Mrs Howe?
Kay, she said.
Her eyes were very bright, very wide.
Is Molly in?
Molly’s out, Kay said. Would you like to wait for her?
If I might, yes, thank you. She held her arm out, and I stepped across the threshold, through the vestibule, into the bright living room.
Do you know when she’s coming back? I said.
But Kay had already forgotten about me; with one knee up on the arm of the couch, she was straightening the pictures.
Left alone, I sat politely in the living room for a while. I had my bag in the car but I didn’t quite feel right about bringing it in yet. After an hour had passed, during which your mother walked by me four times, humming to herself, without so much as looking at me, I felt free to give myself a tour. At the top of the stairs was, I guessed, your room. It was unmistakably the bedroom of a young girclass="underline" the novels and high school textbooks still in the low, two-shelf bookcase, the stenciled mural on one wall of characters from nursery rhymes, the fringed and tasseled spread on the old wooden bed with the half-moon headboard. No photos in there, though, of you or anyone else, which I thought was odd; no trophies or mementos or anything specific to who you were, or are; still, that didn’t stop me from breathing the air in there, the atmosphere of you at age eight, age ten, age fourteen, as if I were on the top of a mountain.
I heard Kay humming as I came downstairs again. She was polishing the silver. It was now nearly six o’clock; there was no sign of you; and I was starving. Yet for all Kay’s industriousness I saw no sign that she was planning dinner, for herself or for anyone else. I hadn’t seen her eat all day.
Did Molly say what time she might be back?
No, dear, Kay said, smiling.
Because I wasn’t really … I hadn’t planned … I trailed off feebly, not sure how to say politely any of the things it occurred to me to say. Finally I hit upon:
Mrs Howe, since I’m putting you to so much trouble, I’d be happy to drive into town and pick up something for dinner.
She smiled reproachfully at me, as one would at a small child. Oh, you wouldn’t find anything open now, this late on a Sunday, she said. Not in a little town like this.
She went back to her polishing. My hunger was getting the better of me, even at the same time as I was growing a little afraid of her. All of a sudden it occurred to me to wonder if your father had died. Silently I begged you to get back home from wherever you were. Would you mind, I said, if I helped myself to something? I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve come all the way from California today. You know how that airplane food is.
Help yourself, Kay said cheerfully. I think Molly did some shopping.
I got myself two turkey sandwiches and a can of Sprite and sat at the little table in the kitchen. It was dark outside. I thought what an odd thing it was, to find myself in the space of a day transported into your childhood kitchen, and how that oddness would dissipate at once if you would just show up.
Kay was standing in the kitchen doorway. She now wore a nightgown.
Who did you say you were again? she said.
Hurriedly, I swallowed, and wiped my mouth. John Wheelwright, I said. I could have gone on, but I didn’t; surely the name must have meant something to her.
You’re the boy that’s been calling all the time, she said finally, with a terrifying kind of neutrality. From Berkeley.
Yes, that’s right.
She nodded. Well, good night, she said. And before I could resign myself to sleeping in my car, she added: If you like you can sleep in Richard’s room. I just put fresh sheets on the bed yesterday.
Mrs Howe. Do you know where Molly’s gone?
She shrugged. Molly comes and goes, she said. She’s always been a very independent girl. Very mature for her age.