Dad leaned forward and unceremoniously shoved at the hip of a male partygoer who had drifted backward partway between Dad and the TV set. The partygoer looked around in surprise, saw what he’d done, apologized, and moved away.
Mom, her hands full of snapshots, pursued a distinguished older gentleman — the only man there in a suit — out onto the deck under the sun.
Buddy rose from the sofa, took the pretty girl by the elbow, and walked her over to Dad and the TV set. “Dad Pine,” he said, “I’d like you to meet—”
With a warning cough, not really a groan or a snarl, Dad said, “Bud-dy.”
“Dad Pine,” Buddy said easily, unintimidated, “that’s the commercial. Come on, I want you to meet a very nice girl. Annie, this is Jack’s father.”
“Hi,” said the pretty girl to the back of Dad’s head.
Dad swiveled around, still irritable, and looked past Buddy at the pretty girl. He reacted with surprise, and then with pleasure, and popped to his feet. Smiling at the pretty girl, he reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a full set of false teeth. Still smiling at the pretty girl, he inserted these teeth into his mouth, wiped his right hand on his pants to dry it somewhat, and extended it toward her, now flashing a smile full of gleaming teeth. “Nice to know you,” he said.
Glazed, the pretty girl said, “You, too.” Reluctantly, she shook Dad’s hand.
The sun is in my eyes. The sun is in my eyes. How can I see with the sun in my eyes?
“I don’t know,” I say, to that gray vagueness where my interviewer was wont to reside. “I don’t know, I just don’t know. Maybe Mom and Dad and me, maybe the truth is we’d all grown apart just a little bit. Just a little too far apart, somehow.”
Flashback 15B
The kitchen of the Malibu house was very modern, in white Formica and stainless steel. At the butcher-block central island sat Hoskins, in his butler’s tuxedo, obediently looking at photos being shown to him by Mom. Jack entered the room, unwary, then saw what was going on and tried to reverse his field and slide back on out of there. But it was too late; Mom had seen him. Looking up, waving a handful of photos at him, she said, “Come here, Sonny. Cousin Gertrude sent more pictures.”
“That’s nice,” Jack said, from the doorway. “You and Hoskins—”
“I want you to see these pictures, Sonny,” Mom insisted.
Reluctantly, Jack crossed the room, stood beside Hoskins, and looked down at the pictures.
“Here’s Edwina on her sled,” Mom said. “Cute?”
“Cute,” said Jack.
“Here’s Mabel’s Doberman pinscher with its new collar on,” Mom said. “Isn’t that adorable?”
“Adorable,” said Jack.
“Here’s Mrs. Wallace’s new refrigerator,” Mom said.
“Mom,” said Jack, “I don’t even know Mrs. Wallace.”
Suddenly furious, Mom turned hot, enraged eyes on Jack and snarled at him through gritted teeth: “You don’t have to know Mrs. Wallace to look at her new refrigerator.”
Jack nodded, his skin paler around the eyes. He bent his head to look at Mrs. Wallace’s refrigerator.
My hand is in front of my eyes because of that sunlight, that sunlight pressing down on me, like looking up through water at the sky and seeing only white, the waves moving, the whiteness glaring on my eyeballs.
“Mr. Pine?”
“Yes yes yes,” I say. “I’m all right. I’m here. I know what’s going on. You are interviewing me. I am telling you my story. I am telling you about Mom and Dad, and how after a while Buddy and I decided maybe it would be better if we moved away from the beach for a while.”
Flashback 15C
The living room without its party, without the fire crackling cozily in the central fireplace, seemed larger and more impersonal. Moving through this space as though it were truly large, a vast desert, was a Guatemalan maid, slowly and ineptly dusting. Dust motes in the air followed her lazily from place to place.
Mom entered, in a vicious mood, clutching handfuls of snapshots. “Where’s my Jack?” she demanded, glowering at the maid. “Where’s my Sonny Boy?”
“Gone away,” the maid told her.
“Gone away?” Mom glared so hard she looked as though she wanted to bite the maid’s nose off. “Gone where?”
“Topanga Canyon,” the maid said.
Mom blinked. She looked around. She said, “With Buddy? When’s he coming back?”
“He no comin’ back,” the maid said.
Mom rose on the balls of her feet, red splotches appearing on her cheeks. “What? What the hell do you know?”
“They no comin’ back,” the maid repeated. All of the unfairness of her life was summed up in those words.
Mom squinted her eyes down to little slits and thrust her jaw at the maid. “Who are you, anyway?” she wanted to know.
The maid curtsied; dust motes ebbed and flowed all about her. “I am Constanza,” she said. “I’m an illegal, so I gotta stay in the job.”
Mom said, “You mean, Hoskins is gone, too?”
“Oh, sure,” Constanza said. “He no illegal. He can quit any damn time. He say so.”
“Dammit to hell and back,” Mom said. “I wanted to show him these new pictures.”
“Well, he gone,” Constanza said, and sighed.
Mom studied the maid, then thrust photos at her, saying, “Here, you can look at them.” Shoving a picture into Constanza’s hands, she said, “This is the twins with their rock polisher. Don’t they look alike? Bet you can’t tell which one is Bobby.”
Constanza dropped her dust rag on a chair and considered the photo. She pointed. “That one,” she said.
Impressed, Mom said, “Pretty good! Come on, sit down here. Let’s take a look at these.”
Mom and the Guatemalan maid sat side by side on a sofa that faced the sea. They did not look out. They bent their heads together over the pictures, one by one.
All this light, this light, this glaring light. I can’t even look up anymore. I have to talk to my interviewer’s gray shins. I sit tailor-fashion, legs folded in front of me, knees rising winglike on both sides. I lean forward over this nest of legs, and I pull my brows down low over my eyes because of all that sunlight, and I tell my interviewer’s shins, “Mom and Dad were happy there at the beach. It wouldn’t have been fair to take them away to the ranch.”
“Did they ever see the ranch at all?”
“Oh, no. I didn’t see any point in confusing them.” I touch my fingers to my forehead, and something is cold. Which is it that’s cold? Is it my fingers, or is it my forehead? Shouldn’t a person know these things? Shouldn’t a person be able to tell these things about his own fucking body?
I am atremble with rage. I can feel it. I know it’s bad for me. I am not supposed to feel great emotions, not the large emotions; they are all very bad for me. I can perform them, none better, but I am not supposed to experience them.
I take a deep breath, full of splinters and broken glass. I exhale dark, foul, noxious vapors. My hand (possibly cold) moves down from my forehead (possibly cold) to my lap (oh, most definitely cold).
“The ranch,” my interviewer says.
“The ranch. Yes. The ranch was good for me then. I found peace.” I lift my head, ignoring the harsh glare, my own face gleaming and shining. I smile, my light brighter than the sun. “I also found God,” I say.
Flashback 16