Ghost Story
Part One
The invitation -- the brochure of an invitation -- had been wrapped in twine and stamped with wax, snug in a parchment envelope, and when it arrived unexpectedly through the mail slot of our Bergen Street apartment, it took up a great deal of space. Before even bothering to check the return address, I resented the weight of it in my hands. "The writing looks ... faux ancient," said Isa, glancing over my shoulder. "Like for a spa or a cult."
She opened the refrigerator and took out a Corona, not bothering to ask if I wanted one, not bothering with Who is it from? She didn't care about other people. This was something I used to tease her about -- the implication of which used to also mean that she only cared about me. "Your father called again," she said. "Can I at least erase the messages?"
It was February, freezing cold. Instead of hibernating, we had testily gone out every evening and blown all of our cash. It usually began with Isa and a Corona. Eventually I'd open a bottle of wine. We'd become too dumb to make dinner. If I suggested ordering in, Isa became depressed -- all that wasted plastic, the singularly depressing aspect of plastic containers after dark -- and she'd begin her talk about moving to a place where she'd have no choice but to cook all the time. Then I'd put on my coat. She always acted a little insulted but once we were out the door and shocked by the cold, it was inevitably better than being inside our apartment where a big fight was always ready to go. Besides it was fun at the restaurants during this no-joke of a winter -- the fogged up windows, the lack of crowds -- the waiters treated us as if we were in love.
The envelope in my hands did look cultish, she was right. Everyone was getting married. We'd fielded three separate phone calls announcing such plans as recently as New Year's Day. Because we'd gone and done it after knowing each other for a few months, everyone assumed we'd be happy for them.
"Hand me a scissors?" I asked, and Isa practically threw me one of our six dull kitchen knives (we never bothered to sharpen them, neither one of us was good with things like that) before heading into the bathroom; she liked a bath at the end of the day. I wondered: had she become flagrantly careless with knives or was I becoming increasingly paranoid? I sliced the twine, sliced a bit of my finger with it, and there were layers and layers of horrid information, thin and yellow as onionskin, now stained -- appropriately and ridiculously -- with my blood.
Join us in the ancestral home of Harry's family, the invitation began. Join us as we unite our lives in Santa Fe--
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," I must have muttered. I didn't feel as if I'd said anything; I didn't feel anything besides maybe my sliced finger, but Isa called out: "Who is it now?" over the sound of running water.
"Bastard..." I said, while looking around the cluttered room, at the railroad apartment I'd lived in for roughly five years -- three years alone and nearly two with Isa. I checked out the metal desk, the fireplace full of candles, the green lantern hanging from the ceiling that looked as if it had been excavated from an attic and never cleaned, and the battered piano squashed in the corner. Finally the large painting above the sunken couch -- vague shapes of houses in bleached out light; it had begun to serve as a signpost of relief -- relief that I still loved that painting, hers, as much as I once did.
"What did you say?" she called out from the bathroom. "I couldn't hear a thing."
"It's from my father," I said, so softly that not even I was sure the words had made it out alive. "Did you hear me?"
"No," she said. "I didn't."
I walked into the bathroom, where she lay in greenish water, her paint-stained hands and arms clouding up the tub. I turned on the light.
"Jesus," she said, "what--?" She shielded her flushed face from the light, splashed water in my direction.
"Well at least now I know why he's been calling." I took off my clothes, leaving them where they fell on the slippery floor. "I want in."
"I bet you do." She lay still for a moment before drawing her knees to her chest. The water was about fifteen degrees too hot but I liked how, for a moment or two, I felt nothing but general discomfort. After some difficulty, I sat facing Isa; she grabbed my hair and tugged. "Poor baby," she said. I let myself fall onto her, up against her pale small breasts, her long slope of stomach. Her legs, like vines, always curled around whatever was closest -- a pile of clothing, a pillow, and in this case, me. Her fingers were already pruned. There were traces of yellow and red. I held one of her hands in both of my own like a little florid fish, sure that at any moment it would slip right through my fingers.
We ate frozen waffles for dinner. Isa had a craving and I didn't care. I drank coffee and then whiskey in a steady stream. "Don't use this as an excuse to be morose," she said.
I looked at her blankly.
"You know you tend to do that," she said, spearing a slice of banana. "It's like you're relieved to have a reason to wallow." She dipped the banana in a pool of maple syrup. Then she smiled. "I'm sure his lawyer will keep sending you those big ole checks."
"You think that's what I'm thinking about?"
"I don't know what you're thinking about. I just know you -- we -- should stop taking his money."
"He has invested money in particular projects."
"Yeah -- like our rent."
"That was only once -- just listen, will you? My father is getting married," I said, calmly. "I didn't even know his last divorce had gone through."
"Well you don't have to go," she said. "You do know that, don't you? I mean -- I'm not going."
"You've already decided this?"
"It's not like I'd need to think about it. It would be hypocritical."
"You met him twice."
"I met him three times."
"Oh, well, in that case--" I was raising my voice, which I knew I wasn't supposed to do. "Since you met him three times."
"One of those times was at his wedding."
Two years ago at the Metropolitan Club in Manhattan. White roses and black dresses. I'd known Isa for exactly one week. My father gazed at an investment banker named Caitlin Grass and publicly declared himself the happiest man on earth. She was twenty-four years old.
"Do you actually want me to keep an open mind?"
Truth was: I loved how much she loathed him. Old girlfriends had wanted to hate him. They were all fired up and ready after hearing how, when I was nine, my father not only left my mother to marry her best friend Lorraine, but that he'd also left me more or less completely -- a birthday phone call and minimal child support for my barely-financially-solvent mother until I'd turned eighteen. By then he had a different wife and step-daughter, his company had done unreasonably well, and he began making decisions about my life. He decided it was essential that I attend an excellent college and that he would foot the bill. He decided I should travel as much as possible and that he would pay for that too. Books began arriving in the mail, boxes of clothing from Paris, a Manuel Bravo photograph bought at auction in Miami. Take it, my mother said, take it all. It hadn't occurred to me to do otherwise. I was relieved not to take out student loans, thrilled to travel -- I even visited him in London, where he was then living, and fooled around with the step-daughter. I gave my mother the photograph (which still hangs in her living room -- a girl on a balcony in Mexico City who looks like every wistful girl in the world) and most of the clothes, which didn't fit anyway, which she sold in her vintage clothing store. She told some of her regular clients the story -- most of the clothes in her store had a story; trendy women had come to rely on them for party conversation.
My old girlfriends -- they had hated my father but then they'd met him. I'd assumed it would be the same with Isa, that after meeting him she would never be able to recapture her fever pitch of hatred, that even she would be charmed. But she was apparently immune. That or she was attracted to my father and it infuriated her. There was always that charming possibility and with Isa I would never know. "It's in Santa Fe," I said.
"Why?"
I shrugged, "Family history." I watched her light a cigarette, using all my self-control to not yell at her to please quit smoking or at least have the courtesy to do it outside, yes even in the freezing cold.
"Which kind?"
"His kind. His family," I said, as if I said: "his bunion." It didn't really occur to me that his family was also mine.
"I thought they sprung from the pavement of The Upper East Side."
"Germany. They apparently came from Germany. Then Santa Fe."
"Huh. Maybe you should go."
"Maybe you should come."
"What do you know about his family?"
"Why -- you interested?" I cleared dishes from the table and placed them in the sink, and -- while she waited to be entertained -- split a chocolate bar in half. "My great-great-grandfather went to Santa Fe because there were too many Jews in New York."
"See, that sounds like your family already." She reached for the other half of the chocolate bar and I handed it over. She thought we were self-hating Jews, my mother and me -- evidence of which was that I grew up celebrating Christmas and Easter with pagan trees and eggs and candy. My mother!-- who also celebrated March Fourth, by waking me up when I was a kid and making me march around the apartment. She liked holidays. It was one thing my parents had shared. "Every year," said Isa in a sing-song tone, "every single year: on which holiday do they fast? They! You went to a basically Jewish private school, a nominally Jewish camp--"
"--your favorite ridiculous exaggeration--"
"--your mother has a Jewish business partner, you have all Jewish doctors, and yet you refuse to remember a single holiday."
"Why do you care? You're an atheist. You're an atheist from staunch formerly Lutheran people."
"Come on. I mean -- come on."
"Do you want to hear the story?"
"I do."
"He came west with his bride, a spoiled girl from Berlin who insisted on having a bathtub."
"Be serious."
"I am. She wanted that bathtub and he'd been living in America without a woman for ten years. They came by horse and buggy across the nation with a clawfoot tub strapped to the wagon."
"Then what?"
"They were prosperous. They multiplied."
"And?"
"And -- what do you think? It's my father's family. Things went sour."
"Sour how?"
"Not entirely clear. Some say he died from grief after she took their child and left him. Some say he killed himself."
"Sad," said Isa, with sudden sincerity.
"But wait -- there's more," I said, trying to sound amused as opposed to bitter, a seemingly endless personal quest. "Now their home is a hotel in Santa Fe, a hotel where my father has chosen to have a fifth wedding."
"There's a hotel in your family?"
"Not in our family anymore -- the house was sold off over a century ago, when he died."
"Maybe it's haunted," she shrugged, but her eyes lit up -- she was really a goth girl at heart. "Why haven't you ever told me about this?"
"You think you know everything about me?" I said lightly, and instantly regretted it.
"Not in a million years," she drowned her cigarette in a pool of syrup and I started doing the dishes. The story was somehow over.
Part Two
A quiet highway. A sandy blur. Light too pretty to look at -- white gold and nearly visible, thrumming off the mountains. Isa looking at a map, trying to believe in her sense of direction which was unfailingly wrong; sometimes she got lost on the fringes of our neighborhood and she'd call my cell phone asking for cross streets, without any embarrassment. I drove and tried not to be distracted by the highway's yellow lines; the paint looked fresh, wet. It was springtime here in New Mexico, spring in New York too, which was decidedly less buoyant, but more interesting clothing-wise. Riding the train was fun again. The girls had shed their cocoon-like coats and revealed themselves -- their bare legs pale and profligate, their morning hair wet, soaking the backs of new blouses. I couldn't stop imagining what Isa would take from our apartment if she left me. "Honey, you don't need to look at the map."
"Why aren't we taking the scenic route?"
"I suddenly feel like I just want to get there."
"You do?"
"It's like the morning of my mother's surgery. I nearly shoved her into that room."
"You did not," she said, and then softer, "you were so gentle it was painful to watch."
"He asked me, via email, to give a toast."
"So you've said. Many times. Does that really surprise you?"
"I'm not making any toasts." I began regretting the Xanax I'd taken for the flight. The one cloud in the sky began to look precarious. With my best toasting voice, I said, "As a kid I used to say, 'my father and me -- we have a casual relationship,' and I never understood why people laughed..."
She rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. Isa had sat through a rare manicure before we left and her short nails were painted a kind of industrial beige. I thought it was a curious choice. "What do you think she's like?"
"I haven't allowed myself to dwell," I lied. "Her name is Jenny. They met in Cabo San Lucas. I'm sure she's an intellectual giant."
She turned on the radio, from which static emerged, sounding like white noise. Sometimes she liked to listen to the hum of it, while trying to fall asleep. But she didn't close her eyes. She looked alert, ready. On an overturned car by the side of the road in spray-painted Prussian blue: Must Not Sleep. Must Warn Others. It gave me an ominous feeling but I didn't point it out. Nor did I point out sharp dots of shrubs hiding in inky shadows. I didn't ask Isa if this kind of light made her want to paint. I pissed in a field of straw-colored grass. Flies swarmed loudly and I zipped up, only to realize I stood next to the remains of an unrecognizable animal -- torso bright red blood and scorched rotted black, with the stench of former flesh. Back at the idling car, I knew I looked pale but she didn't seem to notice.
"Thank you for coming," I told her.
The central building of the hotel was a 19th century three-story brick Victorian, built by my great-great-grandfather. This ancestral home stood in tact, while the rest of the place was built around it in contrasting adobe style. Isa wanted to stay in the main house of course, because that had been their home. I'd assured her that ours was a family that knew its ghosts and that the only one who haunted me was very much alive, but she insisted. The lobby was dominated by a massive ornate fireplace, where a fire blazed with such gusto it looked dangerous. Divans were swathed in silk. My cousin Rudolph checked in just ahead of us with a foreign-looking man who was clearly his boyfriend. I played Marco Polo with Rudolph once in Amaganssett. I must have been six or seven. He'd swum underwater and grabbed my ankles. He'd been a fat kid around ten years old and now he was buff and wearing Italian loafers, but I recognized him immediately. He had Shein eyes, the dark eyes of a dog, eyes that I have too. "Hi Rudolph," I said, and there was a round of handshaking and awkward half-hugging. Isa's smile held steady. The boyfriend, Antonio, looked bored.
"You still living in D.C.?" Rudolph asked.
"I've never lived in D.C.," I said.
"You never lived in D.C.?"
"Never. Maybe I should," I added, laughing, trying not to make him feel bad.
"I thought you moved to Washington."
I realized the most recent thing he'd probably heard about me was that I was thinking of living in Washington state for a while -- maybe buy a house with some people I knew from film school -- but I hadn't. I realized I hadn't done anything important enough to make it through to the barely functioning grapevine of my father's bloodline. A short film about a boy who gets lost in the desert--a film shot on sixteen millimeter for less than ten thousand dollars with a fairly recognizable child actor, a film which won a Frankfurt Film Festival prize and was screened at Telluride and Sundance apparently didn't qualify.
"I think it's great what your dad is doing," he said, "getting us all together here."
"I didn't realize you were in touch with my father," I said.
"He's been really helpful," he said. And off my obviously confused look: "I sold my company," he added.
"Oh right," I said, "right. Congratulations about that."
"And you're the dancer?" he said to Isa.
"Painter."
"So, OK this is close," Antonio said.
"He's kidding," Rudolph said, and Antonio gestured -- the way only Europeans truly can -- with the most dismissive of facial expressions.
Surprisingly, she laughed, and Rudolph laughed too. I really needed to relax.
Upstairs, we took a nap. Or rather we shared a Dos Equis from the mini bar, Isa took a bath as I took half a Xanax. I flipped through the hotel brochure, created hypothetical room service orders and stared at the ceiling. Isa emerged, all post-bath relaxed, and let the hotel robe fall open. Her breasts produced in me the sensation I imagined I might only have otherwise on the occasion of holding a newborn, any newborn -- a puppy, a rabbit, a bird. Isa's breasts looked so vulnerable while the rest of her so frankly did not. She was striking by any account -- at first glance or after three years -- endless legs, long dark hair cut with sharp bangs, which she sometimes dyed black and sometimes left alone, a crooked freckled nose; frank blue eyes with unusually dilated pupils so it looked like she was tripping half the time, and a full square mouth like a model from the eighties. Her breasts were like her secret-- the one place she was slight. Sometimes I swear she'd let her shirt fall open in the middle of a fight because she knew how they undid me. I touched them, inhaled the hollow smell of hotel sheets and we held each other the way we did sometimes, as if sex could be coming at any minute and both of us were frightened. Then we fell asleep.
I ricocheted out of bed and into the shower as Isa ran to the mirror to methodically curl her eyelashes. We often overslept and we were used to the heart-pounding challenge of it, the familiar pattern of curses. Isa had a simple routine for any special occasion, which I usually liked to watch -- eyelashes, powder, red lipstick. The only variation was her lipstick. She had about twenty shades. Perfume too -- a musky mix, a scent without a name -- in a bottle of weighty frosted glass (we'd had a fight about her packing it -- she brought it in her purse) which, like most of Isa's stuff, looked as if it had to have been not purchased -- nothing so common as purchased-- but dug up from the ocean's floor. The music had started. It floated upward from the "Casa Eva" where the hotel brochure promised watercolor, nutrition and weight training classes by day, and where now, cocktails were underway. I thought about the chefs in the adjoining restaurant, sweating the details of dinner, and I wished that I were working this event instead of attending it -- chopping onions chopping shallots, chopping into my fingers. As I put on my suit -- smelling of airplane, stale and cold -- I slowed down, way down, and felt the wee bit of Xanax. I turned on the television and there was CNN without the sound -- a man without arms was nodding -- as Casa Eva's mariachi band kicked up the volume, crooning and strumming away.
Once outside, I felt -- with the astute timing of an accomplished hypochondriac -- a sudden scratch in my throat. I thought about the man without arms. I realized I'd assumed he was a recent soldier but that he might have lost his arms in so many other hideous ways. The air was clear and surprisingly cold. I was an ungrateful bastard with two good arms, not fighting in Iraq, not fighting at all. Stars poked through the dusky sky. "I don't feel so good," I mumbled.
Isa politely ignored me, walking slightly ahead, her heels echoing on the patio. I began to wonder if I might have to lie down on those cool sheets and miss out on the rehearsal dinner. But then I pictured my father's three best friends. I saw them smoking fragrant cigars while shaking their heads; I heard their foul mouths set free by fine tequila: how disappointed they'd be in my ambivalence, that I didn't have the balls to at least make a true decision. Either fully come to the table this weekend, Stan had emailed, or don't show up at all. Besides, I wanted to see them. Harry's a great friend, Stan had told me a few years back at Bemmelman's -- he liked to get me drunk when he was in town -- He's a shitty father? So, fine, let him be your friend. I looked at Isa -- her strapless dress was patterned with what looked like puddles of ink; it was riding up in the back. She wrapped a shawl tightly around her body as if she were warding off a chill. I wanted to put my hands on her shoulders -- warm her up, straighten her dress -- but I didn't.
Part Three
Casa Eva had a general Spanish colonial air with more than a whiff of Mexicana -- whoever had done the flowers (a decidedly non-traditional mix of blood roses and feathers and fruit and plant roots and what appeared to be bits of bone) was clearly a card-carrying member of the Frida Kahlo Fan Club. In addition to the fireplace, there were white candles in heavy candelabras hanging hazardously from the ceiling, candles in hurricanes on the tables, in wooden pronged stands making monster shadows on the ochre walls. There were crosses all over the candle stands, and a crucifix -- however abstract -- over the mantle.
"Holy Jews for Jesus," whispered Isa, And I was surprised to find myself thinking of it as a little bit pesky myself--an irritant to my great-great-grandfather who built the place, who even I knew had enough pride (and profit) to make enough of a donation to a famous French Bishop in exchange for having the Hebrew letters of Yaweh inscribed on the inside of this town's cathedral. My mother told me that tidbit when I was going through a graffiti phase, to illustrate how symbols only mattered if they already held the upper hand. "You think those Catholics knew what those letters meant? You think they cared? They gave him what he wanted in exchange for his money, but I doubt it made a damn bit of difference to anyone's ideology." She'd said my father came from a line of naïve thick-skulled brutes -- wolves that didn't even bother to don sheep's clothing because they could always count on women like her who were dumb enough to be drawn to wolves. She said thank God I was different. That I might act out and do stupid things but that I was not a wolf.
We followed a caterer outside, to where there was some kind of smoke pit, and red and yellow peppers were being scalded in festive rows. Flames blazed out of suspended copper bowls. Turquoise and silver glittered from the crowd like flashbulbs at a stadium. A nose-ringed woman approached with a tray of margaritas, their thick rims blanketed with salt. "Is this the A World Lit Only By Fire party?" I asked the nose-ringed woman, who laughed as Isa did not. Her nose ring glinted silver in the firelight. Her dark eyes flashed unmistakably at me as I carefully picked up a glass. She was a girl who wasn't in a rush, who'd sit by the pool and tell stories into the night, telling me why she was serving margaritas and where she would rather be. "There's a full bar inside, quesadilla station to your right." Then she walked away.
"Darling," said one white-haired woman who might very well have been my Aunt Joan; I couldn't be certain, it had been so long -- I smiled and said the phrase I learned many summers ago at an old girlfriend's sailing club: "Good to see you." A perfect social invention, it straddled the line between a warm hello and who are you. It was so useful that I didn't even mind sounding like Thurston Howell III on "Gilligan's Island."
"Alexander," said a tall woman with wrinkled eyes and tan skin, wearing chunky amber beads -- "it is so wonderful to see you." And I was enveloped in a hug so earnest it should be called something else. Without pulling away, she said, "I'm Jenny," as if to say, "I'm sorry." I smelled something sour beneath her perfume, underneath the swathe of red fabric approximating a sari.
"Oh," I said, pulling away as quickly as possible. The woman who may or may not have been my father's sister (was Joan so short?) took Isa's arm and was talking to her, intently. I said "You're Jenny?" Once it was out there I felt terrible. Her hair was thick and tied back in a simple knot. Her skin was wrinkled in a way that suggested either an outdoor career or a life of rugged leisure. Although she was kind of heavy she had the posture of someone who might have been a dancer. Her eyes were the color of seaweed. She was attractive, really, she was just -- "I just--"
But she only nodded, gave a good solid stare, and surprisingly, she smiled. "You just weren't picturing someone so old."
"No," I said, "I mean--"
"Shh," she said, and helped herself to a sip from my margarita, the glass gone sweaty in my hand. "You weren't expecting someone so age-appropriate." She laughed then, a hearty smoker's laugh. "Did you see your father?"
And there he was, partially hidden -- as was only appropriate -- by a cloud of smoke from the grill. His suit was sharp, his hair thick, and his hands exactly as large as I remembered as they grabbed a friend by the shoulders. He shook his friend and the friend struggled to get free of him. Then they laughed as if nothing could be funnier.He said hello to New Yorkers in their best southwest festive attire, a British contingent, some Greeks. His friends ranged from the past (Stan he'd met while vacationing with my mother in the Caribbean -- 1967) right up to the present (no doubt the Japanese couple by the pool had been hospitable during this year's six-month stint in Tokyo.) He never stopped making friends -- in hotels, at weddings in foreign countries -- his capacity for new people was inexhaustible.
"There he is," I heard Isa say, "There's Mr. Wonderful."
"Isa!" Jenny said, as if they were reuniting. "I didn't even see you!"
"Here I am," said Isa, nodding. She stuck out her hand attempting to avoid a hug, but Jenny ignored the hand and instead embraced her with kisses, one on each cheek.
"Welcome," she said, beaming. "We're thrilled that you could come. Harry!" She called suddenly. "Harry -- look who's here." Her tone of voice was guileless, so enthusiastic; she seemed genuinely happy to meet us.
My father embraced me with a big bear hug and a kiss on the forehead. We were exactly the same height. "Alexander Shein," he said, gripping my shoulders. "How are you, Alexander Shein?" Then he moved onto Isa, and embraced her just as Jenny had. His eye twitch kicked in, after the greetings were done. He'd always had trouble focusing after the initial hello; I was used to this. There was never too much to say unless he was jazzed by a new venture, in which case he'd start right in with the details of where he'd recently been -- how hard the people worked, how lazy they were, what new and exotic food he'd discovered he could not live without.
"What a gorgeous couple," Jenny said to him, "aren't we lucky to have them here?"
"Luck's got nothing to do with it. You came," he said, nodding. "That's terrific, just terrific." And that was it. They were squired away by a thin blond woman in white linen.
"Well," Isa muttered while sucking on an ice cube, "that was interesting. I have to pee."
I nodded and watched her walk away, realizing quickly how panicked I was to be standing there without her, but before I could think about it for too long, my father's three best friends appeared, approaching one by one like I was the groom, an Italian groom, and it was time to hand over the envelopes. These were men's men. These were men who -- even if married -- didn't tend to operate as a couple. They hugged me with a tentativeness that I began to feel certain wasn't born out of sensitivity to my unique and (they all knew this) complicated position of being Harry's son, but rather it was born of fear. They were afraid that I was a loser. They were afraid because they too had neglected their children and tortured their wives, and because these men were younger than my father (he'd always run with a younger crowd) and had younger children, they were afraid I was the damning proof that their actions would not go unpunished. I could see it in their eyes -- Stan's were blue and a bit rheumy (apparently it was taxing taking a multi-million dollar company private), Robert's were hazel and clear (I'd noticed his companion immediately -- a willowy red-head lurking by the bar), and Barry's were brown and peripatetic (killer lawyer, a shark smelling blood) -- they were all afraid of me.
"Look at you," said Stan. They didn't ask about my life; they were afraid to hear. There had, after all, been rumors of an independent film career, three words that these men would find oxymoronic at best.
"Good to see you Stan," I nodded. "Robert. Barry." What you haven't heard, I didn't say, is that although, it's true, I have clocked many hours -- many years -- on an ancient Steenbeck, editing my own series of black and white films which were, some of them, free of dialogue, and I have taken low-level job upon low-level job in order to maintain this pursuit, I have also met a woman named Meredith Fox. I met her at a party -- she was visiting from L.A. -- and somehow she decided I had funny (and dark!) ideas that were very visual and compelling and that I should develop a pitch for a movie. "What's your take on all this?" I found myself asking instead, nodding in my father's direction.
"He looks happy," said Robert, with what I perceived -- gratefully -- as a touch of condescension.
These men didn't know that even as I stood before them with my shaggy hair and one good suit that I barely had occasion to wear -- even as I behaved just like the self-defeating young man they'd grown accustomed to seeing over the years -- now I'd actually made some money and in a manner so unlikely and preposterous that I knew they would have to appreciate it. I wanted to tell them everything. I knew that to my father's friends, a hundred and twenty thousand dollars was chump change, but for some reason, keeping this information to myself was proving difficult as hell. This was curious really, because since spinning my juvenile ideas for the two semi-literate producers and for Meredith Fox in her very high heels, I'd done little else besides put myself down. I'd been quick to assure everyone I knew that it was a ridiculous soul-selling fluke. But here with Stan and Barry and Robert, I nonetheless wanted to say it: I didn't even have to try.
Stan handed me a shot glass and said, "You look just like your father did when I met him."
I took the drink and knocked it back.
"You do," said Barry, "You're him exactly. It's really kind of frightening."
"It's only the eyes," I felt compelled to point out.
After the three men had moved on, Isa stepped out from what seemed like nowhere.
"You scared me," I said. "I didn't see you standing there." She'd exchanged her empty glass for a bottle of Corona. We drank, silently.
"I feel seasick," I announced.
"We're landlocked."
"I do."
"Look at the horizon."
"There is no horizon." I looked at the margarita girl, who seemed to be efficient, good at getting by.
"The moon then -- look at the moon."
It was bright white -- a mouth full of laminates. The moon was full of itself. "What are we doing?" I asked.
"Here?" she said, "or generally?"
My heart raced as I feared answering wrong, answering in a way that was even vaguely provocative. I wasn't up to it now -- not now, not tonight. "Here," I said quietly. "What are we doing here." Someone tapped my shoulder and I spilled what little was left of my drink, realizing at once that the woman who'd greeted me had not been Aunt Joan, for here she was -- the genuine article -- looking harried, breathing heavy. "Have you seen Rudolph?" she asked, after the perfunctory hellos.
"When we checked in."
"I take it you met Antonio?" Aunt Joan looked less than thrilled.
"I heard he sold his company," I offered.
"Whatever that means," she huffed. Aunt Joan had spent the better part of the 1970s throwing blood on furs. "Look at this," she said, gesturing vaguely to the copper bowls of fire, "all this nonsense," she said. She had been at all of the weddings beginning with her stint as my mother's bridesmaid. It was amazing she still spoke to my father. Incredibly -- from what I could gather -- they were close.
"Don't get me started," I said.
"Why not give him a break for once?" she said reflexively, and I hated her -- the dutiful sister, the liberal activist who'd named her son for a cultish innovator of children's education, who'd watched that son become the homosexual version of her aggressively heterosexual capitalist pig of a brother. "Harry really isn't all bad."
"Are you sure?" I asked.
"This one was always a funny kid," she said to Isa.
"He still is," she replied.
I watched my father through the grill smoke. He wasn't drinking. It was time for dinner and he let us know. "Dinner," he called out, hoarsely, laughing at his rudeness, as if it were a joke. "Dinner, everyone, please -- come inside." "Where's my son?" He didn't say. Where is my son?
Avocado, chipotle and chiles, extremely tender beef. Warm corn bread and wine and wine as Isa stepped out for cigarettes. The margarita girl watched me as I pulled away from the table to pick up my napkin, as I stretched my arm along the back of Isa's chair. Isa returned for the third time as my father stood to speak. People began grabbing the disposable cameras strewn on all the tables for the guests. There was my father, sixty-four years old, so inconceivably comfortable standing and speaking in front of these people, most of whom had not only been to the last rehearsal dinner at The Four Seasons when Caitlin Grass passed out, (Poor child is famished! my father's secretary Belvinda had whispered. Give that girl some duck! We'd tried not to laugh but we couldn't stop) but to the two previous ones as well. The man had never eloped, had never heard of doing things quietly. He stood up straight. His face was lined but his bones were good, his faced showed no signs of falling in on itself or melting into jowls. It was his eyes that distinguished him from looking gruff. It was my father's eyes, I was convinced, that had served him so well with not only women but in business. Like mine and like Rudolph's they were large and droopy, but instead of being a basic brown, his were so dark they looked black and escaped looking dangerous by the set of brows that framed them, that often looked nothing short of comical, with salt and pepper sprouting in unruly bursts. All those candles now served him well; his face took on a kind of nostalgia. After welcoming everyone, he looked down at Jenny, for whom I couldn't help but feel sorry.
"...So the formidable Jenny said to me, 'Harry, this is your home,' and although I'd never been here--" he laughed, joined by the supportive crowd, "well, you all know me, and you know how I feel about a good hotel..." after trailing off, he found that nostalgic look again, and he settled into it for a moment. "Those who know me also know my history. And all I can say is that I believe that history is flexible, and that it is up for interpretation," he paused, taking a small sip of wine. I could swear he looked directly at me: half apology, half challenge. My father paused abruptly, suddenly overcome; "Jenny, I offered you my world the very first night we met. And I know you are a far braver person than I am because, my love, you accepted it." A jagged edge was caught in my throat. I felt my heart stop then start again, as my father did something shocking. He said: "I'd like now to offer a special welcome to my son, Alexander and his wife Isa. Your presence means many worlds to me and I want to say it aloud. Thank you -- thank you especially -- for coming."
The jagged edge became a tiny ripple and, if I had waited, even for one second, to take a slug of wine, it would have transformed cruelly into tears. I managed to turn to Isa with a smile, but when I did, I saw she was gone.
Part Four
She wasn't in the ladies room, the hot tub or the lobby. It seemed particularly infuriating that she would disappear now, when my father was practically sobbing -- acting out, with considerable skill, his enormous capacity for love. The guy at the front desk hadn't seen her but was kind enough to point out that I had food in my teeth. "You okay?" he asked.
I went to check the empty conference rooms.
Off a narrow corridor in the main building, Isa sat in near darkness -- her silver shoes cast aside, her feet curled beneath her. She fiddled with one of the disposable cameras. With light emanating from only one lamp of etched frosted glass, the room appeared to be frozen in time. It was a library -- thick bound books stood in stoic rows, and paintings and etchings hung salon style, crowded on deep red walls; it felt as if we were trespassing.
"Okay," I said, "I found you." She kept her eyes fixed on the wall above the desk. She took a sip from a wine glass. "It is that difficult to just stay through dessert? To just -- just -- do this? My father mentioned us in his toast."
"I know. I heard."
"You couldn't just sit next to me for that one second when everyone was watching?"
She put the wine glass on the floor and yanked up her strapless dress. "Alex."
"Be careful with that glass."
"I hate that you will never get enough from him."
"I will," I said. "I will one day get enough."
She didn't respond. She merely continued to stare at a traditional portrait framed in thick gold-leaf. A girl with big eyes in a high-necked dress. "I like that painting," she eventually said. I would have assumed she'd have thought it decorative, boring.
"I never know what you're going to declare as worthwhile."
"I'm not declaring anything. I just like it. Don't you?"
"I'm not really interested in art right now."
"I know," she said, plainly, looking straight at me. "What are you interested in?" Her lipstick was gone and her lips looked as if she'd been biting them.
"Why did you take off in the middle of his toast?" I cracked my neck. I felt like I was going to explode if I didn't crack every bone in my body. I wanted to crack Isa's back, her toes. I wanted to go back in time. "Please," I said, lamely.
"Please what?"
"Just...please."
She took an audible breath, illustrating how she needed to gather strength in order to continue speaking to me.
"Why do you like the painting."
"Well," she took a heavy breath, "she looks expectant."
"You think?"
"In a sad way. She looks like she has no idea how dark her life might get."
I snorted a laugh. The girl in the painting had the very long lashes and porcelain skin of every portrait of lady I'd ever seen. "What makes you so certain her life got so dark?"
Isa shrugged. "The painting's old -- probably mid-1800s or so. And from what I understand of Victorian times -- if I learned one thing from my overpriced undergraduate education -- is that life, if you were a woman, totally sucked." She took a cigarette from her purse. "--don't worry, I'm not going to light it."
"We all went to college, Baby. We all took back the night."
"Don't be flip. There are choices now. I, for one, don't take it for granted." She lit the cigarette, fanning the smoke away with her hand.
"What is that supposed to mean?" I asked, because I knew exactly what she meant and I didn't want to take her seriously.
"I wonder who she was."
"I'm sure you can find out in the morning. You can't smoke in here."
"Right," she said, stubbing it out on the sole of her shoe. "You're right." She yawned, scratched her shoulder. "They'll probably tell me it's a portrait of your great-great-grandmother -- probably only tell me what I want to hear." She cocked her head to the side, squinted. "Do you do that?"
Meredith Fox had been in town for three weeks in March and somewhere in the middle of those three weeks she convinced me that I should stroll into a meeting with two producers -- each responsible for the kind of popcorn schlock I normally had trouble admitting I was even aware of (pretentious as I knew this made me) -- and just start talking. And maybe because I'd accepted long ago that I was never going to do anything that would make any real money, that I only liked films, small little films, not anything approaching big-budget blockbusters, I felt very relaxed when I entered that room, relaxed and inexplicably confident, nothing like how I felt, say, right then, as I stood facing Isa. "I don't tell you what you want to hear. I tell you the truth."
"You sure about that?" she finally asked. She turned the camera over in her hands, like she might, at any second, go and chuck it at my head. The room smelled musty; it was starting to creep me out. I had gnawing urge to get back to the party and talk to Stan and Barry and Robert. It wasn't that my father's friends would be impressed with the details of my absurd development deal -- seventy thousand for the comedy based on Fred Cole taking yoga, and fifty thousand for the prank phone call thriller, which even I knew had been done to death -- but I wanted, I just did, to let them know. Stan and Barry and Robert would be bound to have some advice for me; if nothing else, they'd have a laugh. For some vaguely sickening reason, this was reassuring.
"Can we please just keep it together now?" I asked.
"I'm not sure," she said. Then she took my picture. I saw spots for so long I thought they might be permanent. I walked through them, through the floaty pink and green and blue, and walked outside to eat cake.
"Please," I whispered. It was the middle of the night. I could have probably counted the nights we'd ever spent apart. She slept curled up in a graceful sleep cocoon -- a superior sleeper, a resting queen -- whose only odd habit was waking to pee and then getting engrossed in an article, spending an hour or so reading in the middle of the night. Although sometimes I had the feeling that she continued reading because she was actually afraid of the dark, afraid of being awake in the middle of the night. "Please," I repeated. "I'm awake," I said. "I am."
"What do you want me to say?"
I whispered: "Tell me the story of how we met."
"I can't do that now."
"Why not?" These walls were incredibly thick. The heavy curtains were drawn. I found Isa's hand and held on. "I'll start," I whispered. "I'll help you." She didn't take her hand away. "Fred Cole always brought women around instead of having the good sense to keep them to himself."
She used to laugh at that line and I couldn't help but always feel a bit of a rush. She could make me feel as if I'd never made anyone laugh until right that very second, and all I wanted was more. "Fred brought girls around and I went home with them and Fred was always surprised."
"Good God," Isa said half-heartedly. "Please stop."
"We did it on the first night, right there in my apartment, right on the hard wood floor."
"We did."
"Poor Fred Cole. That's actually how I thought of him -- Poor Fred Cole."
"Alex," she said. Not only did she keep holding my hand, but she rested her head on my shoulder. "Why not just stop?"
Later -- I didn't say -- when you finally sat still, when you were naked and smoking on my couch with your big feet resting on those stacks of books, you looked so deadly serious. You terrified me. "You brought over your stuff the next week," I continued. "I begged you to."
She had heard this story so many times. I had rattled it off to anyone who'd asked, in order to illustrate how obvious it was for us right from the very beginning. How my clock broke the night I met Isa, how she literally stopped time in my apartment. Why, I wondered, have I never worn a watch? I thought about how I'd never worn a watch and how, when I first wore my wedding ring I attributed the irritation to the fact that I'd never worn anything in the way of jewelry, not even a watch. Isa had told me to just take it off that it wouldn't bother her if I did, but I kept wearing my ring until the irritation went away. I loved my wedding band -- it was simple and platinum and we'd bought it together on eBay. The discomfort had faded and now I never took it off and where, I wondered now, did all my father's wedding rings go? With great lucidity I imagined the passage from Exodus when all the former slaves become enraged with Moses' failure of leadership, how everyone piles up their rings and chains and melts them down in order to build a big fat golden calf. I had no idea what time it was. We'd unplugged the clock because the bright red digital numbers had bothered me. Sensitivo, Isa called me. After all this time she still said it fondly. It might have been dawn, or only minutes since we'd gone to bed. I had told this story before, but I knew that I might be about to let it all fly, all the parts that had previously only ever existed as an internal doubting game.
"What," said Isa. "What."
"I thought if I didn't get you to move into my bed, my bathroom, my life, you would go home with the next asshole that could maintain an erection in the face of your intimidating personality."
"Really," Isa didn't move. Her hand went stiff but, oddly, it was still entwined with mine.
"I was in a panic. I didn't trust you. I never trusted you."
"Yes you did."
"No," I whispered, "I didn't. And it felt like the purest kind of love. You know how I lost all that weight? Apparently it's a good look for me. Old flames crawled out of storefronts, movie theaters, NYU -- I'm telling you, I didn't even care."
Isa bolted up and turned on the light. She sat up in bed and I could tell she was about to yell. "I know that other women want you."
"I know you know," I said, sounding defensive even to myself.
"Then why are you telling me AGAIN?"
"I'm not sure."
"We wanted to get married," she said, flatly. "We both did."
"What kind of people rush to get married? Pregnant people, virgins, or else desperate kinds of people. Right?"
"No, Alex."
"Desperate characters."
"No." She was wearing a white tee shirt. She had the prettiest knotted hair.
I got out of bed and pulled on my pants because I hate arguing while naked.
"Where are you going?"
"I'd like to think that If I'd known that you had in fact been sleeping with Fred on and off pretty much the whole time we were dating, up until only a few weeks before we got married, it would have made a difference in the way I was so urgent about it, but, to be honest, I'm not sure it would have. I think I would have told myself: I won. I think I was exactly that anxious to have you. Is that why you really decided to tell me? Because you couldn't handle watching me lie to myself?"
"Why do you want me to think you slept with Meredith Fox?"
I pulled on my shirt and began buttoning. "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means that, for some reason, you want me to think that you slept with Meredith Fox."
"I--"
She didn't look away until I stopped making all my indignant noises and gestures, of which even I was so tired.
"Did you?" she asked.
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because -- why do you think?"
"I don't know, Alex. Did you want to?"
"No."
She nodded.
"Are you relieved?"
She didn't answer. "Do you think you will ever be finished with all this?"
"All what?"
I sat down on the bed. Then I lay down again, in my pants and shirt, and pulled up the covers. "Why did you tell me about Fred."
Isa put her hand on my head. She wove her fingers through my hair. "I shouldn't have told you. I know that now.And I know I made some really bad decisions. Really bad." She was about to cry but I didn't feel for her. "Really really really really bad." Her tears gave me some measure of relief. She cried and cried and I let her. "But now," she managed, after wiping her snotty nose with the bottom of her tee shirt, "now you need to decide."
"Decide what?"
When she didn't answer, I went to the bathroom, and when I came back she was gone.
Part Five
Outside, the path toward Casa Eva was dimly lit. Star shaped pressed tin lanterns hung from the cottonwood trees; I hadn't noticed them earlier while the more distracting light sources were going full blaze. As I worked my way toward -- what? The bar? Did I really think Isa would be sitting at the hotel bar? Did I really think the bar would be open? It was nearly five o'clock in the morning. There was no wind, no breeze. The leaves on the trees were utterly still; even the smallest and finest among them didn't as much as waver. Birds chirped haphazardly.
Something fell on the stone path from a tallish tree -- a plump orange with bright smooth skin; I put it in my pocket-- not so much out of any real desire to eat it but because I couldn't pass up something for free. Far off, a motor languished and a car swerved. I felt too exposed. I looked up at the brick mansion -- its iron work, its cupola -- trying to imagine it without the trappings of the hotel. What is it about being awake and outside a house -- quiet and hulking in the middle of the night -- that made me suddenly give a shit about everything and everyone? Whenever I had insomnia in other people's houses I became an overwrought humanitarian, assigning meaning to every cornice, every picture window. Here and now, I was hardly immune.
At a table obviously meant for nothing more than cocktails and maybe a small bowl of chips, my father's future wife sat hunched over a stack of papers like a re-invested student, pulling an all-nighter. I said hello.
She looked up and after a startled coughing fit, broke into a laugh. "Oh for God sakes."
I looked at all the papers. The empty cocktail area looked decidedly unfestive without all those bowls of fire. "Didn't mean to cause alarm."
"What are you doing awake?"
She was wearing a faded caftan that looked either purchased in India in the 1960's or last week at Barneys, and her white hair was loose, unusually thick. She hadn't quite removed her mascara and it smudged at the edges of her wide-awake eyes. I decided she had once been a blond. "How about you?" I asked. "Don't you need your sleep -- big weekend and all that?"
"I don't sleep much. Never have." She slid old-lady tortoise reading glasses on top of her head. "Boy do you look tense."
"I'm not."
"Alright then."
"I'm not tense."
"Well, I am. All these place cards, seating charts -- both your father's friends and my own have had some pretty unfortunate and intricate in-fighting. By the time we're our age, you know, you'd think this shit might get easier... How's your handwriting?"
"My handwriting?" I shrugged. "Great -- actually. I can do calligraphy."
She looked at me askance. I could tell she'd heard I was a wiseass and was trying to decide if I was serious. "Well how fortunate. How did this come about?"
"It was a job," I cracked my neck, trying to keep from launching into an explanation of how my mother and I twice came dangerously close to losing our apartment. "I was a teenager and the lady down the hall did wedding invitations." I fought my urge to tell Jenny that when I was sixteen and staying up all night doing wedding invitations, we hadn't heard from my father in over seven months.
"So pull up a chair."
I brought over one of the iron chairs and it scraped on the stone patio. I picked up a pen and began working with her lists. We fell into a system. She rattled off who was sitting next to whom and why; talking reassured her, I could tell, though I couldn't tell if it was the wedding or my middle-of-the-night appearance that had her unsettled. I nodded and wrote names -- most unknown to me -- on heavy paper cards. I was happy to have a task. If I'd run into the garbage man, I would have been chucking plastic bags into a truck.
"Everyone's asleep," I said, apropos of nothing. I thought of how my father's eyes shifted whenever he saw me in a crowd -- whether at an airport or a party, there was always a more pressing distraction. "I'm not exactly sure where Isa is."
She turned a pen over in her hand and her silver bracelets clinked together.
Her glasses hung on a chain, resting on an ample bosom. She looked sympathetic but she didn't press me. I had a sudden urge to toss the glasses aside and lay my head in their stead. "I would like to know why you are marrying my father." I couldn't help but sigh. "You seem like a very nice person."
She asked if I wanted to go get some eggs.
"It's barely morning."
"Look again," she said. And it was true; the pink sun was rising. "Come, Alexander." She rose from the table, put her papers and pens in a canvas tote, and I followed her out of the courtyard and into a rental car.
"Are you really going to marry him?" I asked, as she turned the key in the ignition, and when she gunned out into dawn's empty streets, I couldn't help but ask again. I could tell this woman loved to drive, had probably driven all over the world -- left side, right side, stick shift, maybe a motorcycle or two. As the sun revealed the red land with its fleshy golden light, Jenny sped right by it. She drove and drove until we were no longer in Santa Fe. No music, no talk. She knew where she was going. We stopped at a place that looked like a convenience store but it had a few tables in the back. She instructed me to put more green chilies on my eggs, how to drink my coffee black during the meal and with milk and sugar afterward. She spoke Spanish to the waitress. She pet the old Irish Setter who sulked at our feet, spoiled him with pieces of tortilla. She pushed her plate slightly away from her as if she was passing a note. "Curious about how your father and I met?" The question had never occurred to me. "I'm aware I'm not quite his usual type." And she smiled at my reaction -- I guess I'd tried to look neutral.
"I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but -- why are you getting married?"
"You mean so soon? Or at our age?"
I nodded, "I guess both."
"You know, Alexander--"
"It's really Alex. Alex is better."
"Alex. During the time I've known your father, he has talked extensively about you."
"Uh-huh."
"Just to let you know."
"Okay. Well ... that's -- fine. What am I supposed to say about that?"
She didn't answer.
"I have to tell you I sense you're expecting something like: I had no idea he cared. I'm feeling a very strong impulse on your part to remove my father's supposed shame -- isn't that kind of the idea here? Give the occasion a bit more heart?"
The other table paid and hit the road and the waitress sponged their crumbs onto the floor and the dog licked them up; I admired their symbiosis. I was such an asshole. "How did you meet your wife?" Jenny asked. I realized her question was not defensive in the least. This unnerved me completely and I had the troubling and obviously delayed realization that she reminded me of my mother.
I thought for a moment about how my father had no idea how Isa and I met, how I had been to his weddings and watched his conjugal displays and if I was perfectly honest, I wasn't sure if I didn't prefer it that way -- moving under his radar, escaping his always-expanding view. "We met through a friend."
She nodded politely.
"I'm sorry," I said.
She held my gaze in a way that usually would have bothered me, but it didn't.
A boy wakes up alone in the middle of the desert. It seems as though he'd been walking in his sleep but never made it back to his tent. He heads back to his campsite, looking for his parents. There are all the requisite items of a successful campsite and, in addition, a play-tent that looks like a shark. The opening is rimmed with white triangle teeth. After no one answers, the boy sits inside the tent and starts to count. Then he begins to search. He walks and walks. Cacti, Agave, darting lizards. Heat is palpable. Vultures swoop. By nightfall he's lost. But the camera retraces his steps and after a long silent pan back the way he came we see the campsite, where two men drink beer in silence. From their dialogue it is clear that they've done something to the parents. Out in the desert the boy is walking, trying to find his way back and we see that either way -- whether he remains lost in the desert or whether he finds the campsite -- he's in serious danger.
As we drove up alongside of Isa, I realized she had walked a long way from the hotel. I wasn't nervous or angry and I wondered how long it would last. She was kicking a rock toward a telephone pole and I could imagine her in the town of her youth, so vaingloriously bored with everything from the sky on down. When I met her, I thought that her small-town origins were exotic and told her so and she'd laughed and said of course you think that -- you're a romantic. Even though her tone was slightly disparaging, I still felt that to disavow this notion would have been disappointing. I was surprised that she thought this about me but I never told her so. When I shot the film I lived in Baja for a few months on the outskirts of a small town, and even after the small cast and crew had returned to Los Angeles, I continued waking up at 4 a.m. The light was like a slow-moving phantom, but it never failed to take me completely off-guard when it broke into blinding sun. I was, I realized, frequently surprised; I wondered if this might not mean something.
Jenny unlocked my door and told me to get out. I didn't put up a fight. She left us standing on the side of the road without much of a goodbye. I put my arms around Isa and immediately wanted to take off her clothes. I kissed her like it was the last kiss. I wanted to be naked so badly. "It doesn't matter," I said.
"It does."
"Okay." I grabbed her shoulders like I was angry but I wasn't angry.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay."
"Oh," said Isa, "Oh shit--"
A dog had wandered out into the middle of the road. His black tail swished through the windless air, its big tongue hung out to the side. Giving no thought to speeding semi-trucks, or to anything for that matter, I found myself joining him, attempting to make him move. Isa yelled at me but I couldn't hear her. I couldn't hear the angry drivers or, for a moment, the bleating horns. I grabbed this dog, his thick, warm collarless neck, and I yanked until he growled.
"Come," I yelled. "Come." I told him what to do until my voice was nearly gone. But still he wouldn't move. He didn't move until he did, until he must have gotten good and tired of all the fanfare -- the pissed-off backed up traffic, the threats and promises.
In the afterglow of evaded disaster, everything -- including the endless yellow line -- looked fresh and promising. The dog followed us until he stretched out in the hotel lobby, where a bellhop brought him water.
Later that weekend, after my father and Jenny were married, after Isa and I stayed up arguing and laughing with Rudolf and Antonio, after we all had a great time and exchanged information (though we'd likely see them next at someone's -- my father's? -- funeral), after my father avoided me for days and then hugged me goodbye so hard that I was afraid he'd bruised my rib, we saw him -- the same stupid dog -- on our way to the airport. He was in a small decent yard with plastic toys at his feet, wearing a collar, fenced in. He barked furiously but briefly. "I'm happy you saved his life," Isa said.
"I didn't," I said, but I had, and I was glad she'd said so. She was driving and I watched her at the wheel, so focused on not getting lost. I put my hand on Isa's neck and refrained from pointing out that it was really one straight shot, that there was nothing to do now but to watch where we were going, to keep an eye on the road.
