“We have our hearts set on Memphis,” I said.
Jacob and I decided to pack up most of our stuff. Then we’d have movers store it for us until we found a house. That way we wouldn’t have to lug a U-Haul across the country. Jacob was going to sell his car, and we’d keep my Jetta for the drive.
We surfed the Internet to get an idea of housing prices in the Memphis area. According to the real estate website we browsed, there was a two-story Victorian fixer-upper waiting for us. It had three bedrooms, a vaulted ceiling, a living room, charm, and “other features” that included hardwood floors, a fireplace, and the symbol of freedom itself—a porch. It was everything we wanted. But the best part was, the mortgage would be half of what we currently paid in rent.
“Hell, people spend more on cosmetic surgery in Los Angeles than we’re going to spend on a whole maison full of charm,” Jacob said. He was looking at my journal. “Still haven’t named it yet, huh? It’s been almost a year.”
“I’ll probably be done with it by the time I think of one.”
Jacob went through journals faster than I did, obviously because he wrote more. And he bought those small composition books. I had the four-subject, college-ruled mother. I’d finished English, science, and math, but still had all of history to fill up. Jacob’s current journal, which he pulled out of his coat pocket and handed to me, was called La Corbeille.
“It means ‘trash can’ in French,” he said.
La Corbeille contained most of what he’d penned while we were apart. “Read it when you get a chance. So you know how much unnecessary pain you caused me.”
“Shove it,” I said.
Jacob stumbled across the page in my book where I’d scribbled my current and potential surnames, along with the names of our kids. I saw him chuckle.
“Hey!” I said. I tried to grab it from him, but he spun around and held it above my reach. “Did I say you could look at that?”
“This is so cute, Trixie.”
I flung myself down onto the bed and hid my face. Jacob put the book aside, knelt down on the floor, and waited until I looked up. He didn’t say anything, he just kept his eyes fixed on me. It reminded me of the day I met him, when I sat down at the table in Fred’s diner and he stared at me for two minutes straight without talking. I thought he was a total nut job, and I’m sure it was in those 120 seconds that I first fell in love with him.
“What?” I said. “What are you looking at, you shithead?”
He glanced at me sideways. “Do you want to get married?”
“Jacob…” I sighed. “What the hell is that?
“What?”
“I mean, is it a question or a proposal?”
He laughed. “It’s only a question. I just want to know for future reference. If it was a proposal I’d be more prepared. You know, maybe a ring and what not,” he said. “So, do you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you?”
“I like the way your name looks with mine.”
Jacob and I both agreed that marriage was something we’d neither planned on nor longed for all our lives like some people did, yet we weren’t outlandishly opposed to it anymore.
“Deep down,” Jacob said, “I know that calling you my girlfriend for the rest of my life is never going to do our relationship justice.”
I concurred with him on that point.
“Maybe after we get settled we should consider making this thing legit,” he said.
We both wanted a small ceremony. In a cotton field or on the Mississippi river shore. Then we’d go off to Paris for a honeymoon. We’d eat Brie and baguettes and stare at Rodin sculptures by day, and lick mousse au chocolat off of each others toes by night.
FORTY-FIVE
It was as if the Red Sea had parted and was about to lead us to the Promised Land. That’s what we started referring to Memphis as—our promised land. Rand McNally was Moses.
The first article of business I took care of was giving notice on the apartment. We’d been going month to month for a while, so it was no problem getting out of the lease. I was going to lose a bit of my deposit by not providing the required sixty-day heads-up, but I wrote that off. Getting even half of the deposit back would pay our Memphis mortgage for a couple months. Jacob took care of arranging for the cessation of our phone, gas, and electric services. The only other thing I had left was to close down operations at work. I finished up what I’d been working on, filled the last of my orders, and moved out of the studio. I told all my vendors and private customers that I wouldn’t be debuting anything again until spring. I wanted my next collection to be a reflection of my new surroundings, and of the perspective I would have once I began to see the world through the eyes of Memphis, Tennessee. Taking a few months off would also give me extra time for all the home improvement projects Jacob and I envisioned in our little Victorian charmer.
I still couldn’t believe it was really going to happen. If someone would have asked me then, I might have slipped and said maybe there was a God after all. Maybe there was a slim chance he did exist, and he’d started to feel sorry for me and Jacob. He was finally willing to give us a break. Hell, it wasn’t as if we’d been asking to rule the world, or anything diabolical like that. We didn’t want to be presidents, or astronauts, or Bill Gates. We had pathetically simple dreams: to do meaningful work that we could be proud of, to be together, and to be happy. That certainly wasn’t too much to ask.
Or was it?
Jacob spent the entire month leading up to our impending departure awash in Hallelujah responsibilities. He was either on the phone with his editor, or at the computer re-tooling and perfecting his masterpiece. I ran out of things to do after a week, and spent most of my time with Kat and Sara, planning the big bash. We opted to have a barbeque, in honor of the alleged River City staple, at Sara and Pete’s house. They lived on the bottom floor of a white-washed duplex in Venice, one with a small, grassy front yard. Their whole block was closed to cars, only a few streets over from the beach. We booked an ex-con named Ronnie the Rib Tickler to come and cook for us. I was worried about all the noise we might make, but Sara said as long as we offered the neighbors some food we could hang out all night, be as loud as we wanted, and nobody would call the cops.
Jacob thought it was mean that I wouldn’t invite my mother, or Chip and Elise, to the party. In my defense, I knew my mother wouldn’t have stepped one toe in Venice, especially for a barbeque. Even if I had convinced her to come, she would have been paranoid about bugs, thinking they were crawling on her all night. She doesn’t like to be outside unless she’s lounging by the pool in her over-exterminated backyard. As for Chip, he would have spent the evening asking people if they were in the movie business, bragging about his latest box office gross. We didn’t need that kind of crap permeating the mood of the celebration. I made plans for us to have dinner with all of them the night after the party. It was simpler to say good-bye on their own turf.
“What about Greg?” Jacob said. We were trying to make sure we hadn’t forgotten to invite anyone.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Fifteen minutes later Jacob looked up from his crossword puzzle and said, “Trixie, don’t you think you should call your father?”
“You want me to invite my father to the party? Are you high?”
“Not to invite him to the party. Just to call him and tell him you’re leaving. To say good-bye.”
“No,” I said. But truth be told, the thought had crossed my mind. I didn’t want to leave Los Angeles with bad karma. I had visions of, maybe a decade later, the phone ringing in the middle of the night. Chip or Cole would be on the other end, waking me out of a deep sleep, in the arms of my charming husband, in my charming house, in the promised land of Memphis, to tell me my father was dancing with the grim reaper and I’d never see him again. Maybe I’d even helped kill him. Maybe he was so distra
ught over not having me in his life that he couldn’t take it anymore. I know I said I hated him, but I still, for some curious reason, found solace in the idea of him. I mean I had a father. Even if he was useless. Even if I refused to talk to him. Even if he caused me inexcusable angst, it was still nice to know he was there. I told Jacob all of this.
“I hear ya,” Jacob said. “But you made me see Thomas Doorley.”
“Yeah, and look where that got us.”
“Trixie,” Jacob said, “I distinctly remember you telling me the night of my birthday last year that if I called my father, you would call yours. I kept up my end of the bargain.”
“I recall saying no such thing.”
“I’ll call him for you,” Jacob said. He picked up the phone.
I grabbed it from him and put it back on the receiver. “You can’t call him. He’s my father.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“What’s your point?”
“How about this,” Jacob said. “I’ll call him to tell him we’re moving. I’ll suggest that maybe he invite us over before we leave. I’ll tell him you don’t even know I’m asking. Then, if he calls back, we go. If not, fuck him and you never have to see him again.”
I sat there nervous and worried. I knew exactly where the conversation was going to end up.
FORTY-SIX
He called. Less than an hour after he got Jacob’s message. Three days before our party. While Jacob and I were in the middle of deciding what music to take with us on the drive and what to pack, the phone rang. I picked it up and heard my father say my name. I mouthed the words dick and head at Jacob, for getting me into the whole mess in the first place. He grabbed a pen and, in his architectural, left-handed Jacob font, scribbled: Give him a chance, Trixie. He even put in the comma and the period.
I played dumb with my father. I pretended I had no clue his call was even a remote possibility.
“I know you’re probably going to say no,” my father said, “but I heard you were moving. I’d really like to see you before you leave.”
Just to test how big a liar he was, I asked him how he knew about the move. I figured he’d say Chip told him. Instead, he said, “To tell you the truth, honey, Jacob called me. And I was glad he did.”
That’s when I agreed to the visit.
“I’m very proud of you,” Jacob said after I hung up.
“Fuck off.”
FORTY-SEVEN
My father’s house was a flat, modern, cardboard-colored rectangle built high above the sand on Pacific Coast Highway. It looked like a big box that had been stepped on. Inside, the walls were the same drab shade as the exterior, all the floors were made of dark slate blocks, and the furniture was sparse and cozy. It made quite a statement, like something you’d see in Metropolitan Home, which is more than I could say for my mother’s house. She was fond of gilded mirrors, floral patterns, and chintz up the wazoo. Much to my surprise, my father had taste—taste he apparently wasn’t allowed to express when Diane was in charge of the decor.
The back wall of my father’s living room wasn’t a wall at all, but a big glass door that opened up to a deck overlooking the ocean. He walked us out to show us the view and I spotted a hot tub in the corner. It was bubbling and making an awful sucking noise. I took hold of Jacob’s hand and pulled him back inside.
My father shuffled off to get us some wine. “Red or white?” he said.
“Red,” Jacob answered.
Jacob and I stood over the fireplace and examined the dozen or so photos that sat on the mantle. A few of them, I immediately noticed, were of me. I couldn’t believe my father had pictures of me in his house. He even had one I’d never seen. I was probably about six years old in the particular snapshot. It looked like it had been taken at a zoo. I was petting some kind of wild cat, and I had on a bright orange-and-pink plaid jumper.
“Nice threads,” Jacob said.
I recognized myself in the photograph but, oddly enough, I had absolutely no memory of ever being there.
“I bet he put these up today because we were coming over,” I whispered.
Jacob sighed, barely moved his lips and said, “Trixie, what did I tell you?”
To behave, that’s what he’d told me, right before we got out of the car.
My father handed us each a glass of wine. He staggered nervously around me, like he wanted to hug me but didn’t know whether or not he was allowed. After some hesitation, he settled on a firm grip of the shoulder. “It’s really nice to see you, honey.”
I saw my father nod to Jacob, as if to say, This is all thanks to you.
It was, the bastard.
Jacob and I both shook hands with Tara when she came in. I still thought she looked like a dog, but I decided it wasn’t a Yorkie after all, it was a Maltese, just like the one she and my father had. They called him Truffles, and he was out of control. He bounced all over the place, from couch to chair to lap without a break. Truffles was the spitting image of Tara. I’ve heard it said that dogs look like their owners, and if that’s an actual topic of discussion, Tara and her canine companion could have been case study number one to prove it. Tara wore white cotton pants that had elastic around the ankles. They were the same color as Truffles’s fur. And she had a gold chain around her waist, just like her dog’s collar. I wished Kat could have seen her. Kat would have taken one look at that get-up and called the fashion police, or just gone ahead and made a citizen’s arrest. But I tried not to harp on Tara too much. She went out of her way to be nice to me. She complimented me, she asked me questions about my life, and not so much in a bogus way either, more in a way that made me think she simply saw me as the one with all the power. She just wanted me to like her.
“I see your jewelry in Barney’s all the time. It’s really beautiful,” Tara said. “I bought these there.” She pulled her hair back and showed me her earrings. She had on what were known as the Cursive Cs. They were little platinum curls I’d actually made to look like waves, but everyone thought they looked like the handwritten, lowercase c, so that’s what they were called.
“C for Curtis,” she said. I thought that was sweet, in a dumb kind of way.
The art of conversation seemed to be lagging between me and my father. Neither of us wanted to say anything too revealing right off the bat. Awkward small talk was all we could manage. And Tara babbled nervously. Jacob was the only one who was even remotely at ease—more than that, he was enjoying himself. He thrived on my familial tension.
“The dynamics are fascinating as hell,” he said. “I couldn’t make up shit like this if I tried.”
Truffles was having a good time too, circling the dining table like he was playing duck-duck-goose, hoping to find someone who’d give him a morsel or two. I saw my father slip him bites every other lap. Once the treats stopped, however, Truffles jumped directly onto the table.
“Your father taught him that trick,” Tara said to me as she grabbed the dog and set him back on the floor.
My father laughed. “I didn’t teach him that,” he said. “I just didn’t discourage it.”
If my father would have let an animal jump onto the dinner table back when he lived with my mother, she would have ripped him a new asshole and given him a ten-minute lecture about germs.
To sort of break the ice, I think, Jacob asked my father a bunch of lawyer questions, which led to conversations on things I didn’t know Jacob had any knowledge about, like interest rates and the Dow Jones industrial average. When I wondered out loud where Jacob got all the stats, he said, “I read the New York Times, Trixie.”
My father thought it was cute that Jacob called me Trixie.
“When Beatrice was little,” my father said to Jacob, “I used to call her Honey Bee.”
Jacob caught my eye when my father said that. I knew he was thinking of some sort of sexual innuendo to tease me with
later. I had to look away so I didn’t laugh. I didn’t want my father to know how perverted I was.
I’d forgotten all about that nickname. I’d forgotten a lot of things about my father. Like how a deep dimple formed on the left side of his cheek when he smiled, and how the aftershave he wore smelled like sweet Vermouth.
I thought it best to stick with meaningless chit-chat for the evening, but once Jacob got my father loosened up, he was ready to reminisce.
“Did Bea ever tell you about the time we were in London?” my father said. “We drove for hours out to the countryside, to see one of those famous castles, and her mother was furious with her because she wouldn’t look out the window.”
“I was reading,” I said.
“She was sixteen,” my father explained.
“I’d just discovered Ralph Waldo Emerson.”
“During the trip, Beatrice picked up a new motto.”
“‘To be great is to be misunderstood,’” I said.
“She said it thirty times that day if she said it once.”
I heard my parents’ voices in my head: “Beatrice, if all you wanted to do was read, you should’ve stayed home.”
“For Christ’s sake, Diane, leave her be.”
I found it weird that my father recalled that particular trip so fondly. I remember feeling completely tormented the entire time.
My father looked at Jacob. “Back then, Beatrice thought that dead writers and angry musicians were the only people in the world who could comprehend what she was going through.”
“That’s because they were the only ones who were ever around,” I said, much more abrasively than I’d meant to. A silence befell the table.