Chapter 8 Small Graces
San Francisco, 1989
Karen had been living in California for almost two years when her father died. She had only been back to Pennsylvania once, that past Christmas. The length of time it took to fly across the country had not even been a factor in her decision about whether to take her new job and make the move. That wasn’t something you thought about in your twenties, was it? Even if your dad had always been one of the older ones at any school function, even if he had taken an early retirement.
But she had the whole length of the country to contemplate the distance that long day after. Her mom had called, just past dinner time, a totally normal time to call. It hadn’t even occurred to Karen to worry about answering the phone; it had taken several tries for her mother to speak coherently. Even then, Karen couldn’t quite take it in.
Dad not feeling well for several days, Dad going into the hospital, that part was clear, unsurprising. But then suddenly dead from what was probably his third heart attack? At age 64? Mom working with the minister to put together a service, did Karen have any favorite poems or readings to suggest?
Her older brother Peter, fortunately, was already on hand, living close by in Philly. They’d had a hard time even tracking down Clay at his teaching job down south. He would be driving all the way up, as usual the last one to arrive. Karen had quite literally hopped on the first plane she could, but Mom would have been widowed for almost a day by the time she made it back.
On the flight, she managed to snag a window seat, despite the last minute reservation. She did not even fake her usual politeness to the guy in the aisle or the flight attendants, just refused their offers and stared out the window. Land receded and puffs of clouds drifted below, their curved shadows dancing across the treeless western hills and then the flat plains.
All day, ever since the call came, really, she had a sense of standing outside herself. Going through the motions: calling the airline, letting Peter know her flight time, letting her roommates know when she would return. Writing early checks for bills, watering her plants. Telling her boss she would need the time off – he was only a few years older but completely understanding of the situation. Gay guys here, young guys, had seen so many of their friends die from AIDS that they got it, he had explained – she should take the time she needed, be there for her family.
And yet, flying toward home, it struck her that her father was the family member she had known the least well. Not that they had been in conflict. Just that he had been a person of his time and thus barely involved in bringing up the kids. He worked and paid for things, mowed the lawn, took the snapshots on vacations, with only the occasional shadow of a finger in the image to prove that he had been there at all.
What made her sad was thinking about her mom. Mom was what, 51? She hadn’t even finished college, quitting to marry, as she often referred to him, “your dad, the dashing older man.” Yes, she had always managed the family’s budget and she had even worked the last 15 years. But always small, meaningless jobs, things to do for extra spending money. Despite her sociology books and women’s support groups, she had no real career, she had never really lived independently.
Still, Mom had never held Karen back. Not pushed her away from her own budding career in graphic arts or urged her to marry young and have kids, as she herself had done. Or at least she laughingly bemoaned the lack of grandchildren equally to Karen and both her brothers. Always lightly, Karen thought, always with a cheerful acceptance of whatever they chose, whatever life threw at them. Clay choosing to teach the poorest of the poor in the rural south – why not. Karen’s exciting opportunity to help launch her company’s new west coast branch in San Francisco, what great news!
But this. How could anyone accept this? Karen thought of the last time she had seen her dad, dropping her off at the airport early in the morning in the dark of winter. He had insisted on driving her, though he hadn’t been feeling too well. (That was normal, a basic tenet of home life, Dad not feeling too well – it just meant a headache or his needing to lie down for a bit. Not die.) She tried to picture his face, puffy in the glare of streetlights, and stern as he waved off the traffic control guys who scolded him for parking the car in the drop off section.
Instead she heard her mom’s voice in her head again, apologizing over and over, saying, “No, honey, he’s already gone, I’m sorry, it already happened.” Her voice a strange monotone. As numb and outsider herself as Karen felt, she couldn’t imagine how her mom was coping with all this.
Voices from the seats behind her caught her attention. A deep voiced man telling his seatmates about the earthquake. Over three weeks ago, but still so fresh. Karen realized that she had not thought about any of it since last night. Which seemed miraculous considering how immediate and blatant the aftermath still was, daily in the news and in simple decisions about getting around. Still so many aftershocks, which Karen felt exceptionally sensitive to – being in the air was a relief, she realized, because all the jerking and noise here were normal, to be expected.
“Our office opened back up after just a day,” the guy’s voice droned on, “but just one street over there were red-tagged buildings. One of my co-workers lived in the Marina, and their whole block was cordoned off.”
He started explaining the intricacies of the color coded tagging system. Karen, despite herself, flashed back on that afternoon, October 17th. She had been at work, joking around with a couple co-workers since it was late in the workday. One of them had squealed at the first noticeable jolt, and then they had all laughed uncomfortably. Karen had not really had experience with quakes – there had been one in the summer that had startled her, but it had been over before she figured out what it was.
This one had just begun. The project director, always a somber looking guy, had hurried past, his face a grim mask. Heading for their doorway, she realized, something she had read about doing. Instead, she crawled under her desk, wedging herself in and pressing against it as the floor jolted back and forth. There were unidentifiable noises coming from several directions. Her eyes were squeezed closed, but she opened them enough to watch books across the hall slide smoothly off their shelves.
They said it lasted 15 seconds. Karen was sure it went much longer. Things kept swaying up on the 5th floor of her building. Afterwards, she was so shaky herself that she could barely stand. They gathered back together, giggling again with sheer nerves. The director was curt and told everyone to grab their things and go, to take the stairs. And indeed, the whole building’s population was tromping down fast, stirring up a strange dust cloud from fallen plaster throughout the stairwell.
Stumbling onto the sidewalk outside, they saw a bike messenger in the middle of the street, hollering at everyone to stay inside, screaming that they were in danger from things falling. He looked completely unhinged, and they all walked quickly away. In retrospect, she thought, the guy had been right. Some buildings had lost bricks, whole walls had fallen. They could have been killed.
Karen felt a shiver run up her spine. Oddly, she had been calm that day, even in the aftermath when the power was out and smoke was visible from the big fire. She only lived a couple miles from the office and she and another co-worker had set off on foot in the same direction. Walking crowded streets full of office workers doing the same, everybody strangely cheerful, high on nerves. The streets were clogged with cars, but it was the most polite traffic jam she had ever seen. Some intersections even had volunteer traffic directors waving cars past one at a time, since no traffic lights were working.
It wasn’t until the next day, then the days beyond, that Karen really embraced the reality. She read and obsessively reread the stories of near misses and survival. And of the terrible deaths, the people crushed in their cars or trapped under rubble in their buildings. Over that first week she felt both claustrophobia from being inside, and panic with every footstep outside, sure sh
e was stumbling from another aftershock.
In the worst moments, she had even thought about flying home. Or flying anywhere, trying to calm herself with the logistics of escaping a peninsula with wrecked roads and train tracks. What an unpleasant foreshadowing, she thought now. For a long time she closed her eyes and tried to tune out the overwhelming noise of the engines and the soft buzz of voices from behind. She longed, in a way she hadn’t since being a little kid a week after Christmas, for the ability to turn back time. To go back a month, to be back before the death and before the earthquake, and appreciate that life before.
The next days passed in a blur of sleeplessness and almost frantic revelry. People called and many just dropped by – Karen had forgotten that small town social norm. Neighbors piled the counters high with food that no one felt much like eating. Mom flitted room to room, a half dozen task lists started and set aside. For the most part her energy was high, although she barely had a bite to eat. But then she would just sag into herself. Karen or Peter or their Aunt Bette would urge her into the guest room to lie down. She couldn’t even close her eyes in their bedroom, she told them.
There were so many details. Bette put herself in charge of pulling together the service. Mom just kept throwing up her hands, saying we were going to talk about these things, we just hadn’t yet, over the smallest questions. And Peter’s new girlfriend came and proved herself invaluable in making the sorts of phone calls that no one else could face – alerting various offices, canceling appointments, that sort of thing.
Peter helped Mom go through papers. Clay drove back and forth to the airport to pick up other relatives. And Karen found herself back in her regular role of checking in with everyone, trying to sooth nerves and comfort people, politely accepting the lengthy stories and gestures of comfort that various people offered.
After awhile she was forgetting who she had talked to, who was who amongst Dad’s former co-workers and old friends. But it didn’t matter. No one noticed or cared if one of them spaced out. It was like being a child again; you just had to show up and everyone cooed over you. And yet, not like that at all. Karen and her brothers spoke in hushed voices, one of the afternoons when Mom was resting, about whether Mom should sell the house. About where the legal papers were, and what she was likely to get from Dad’s pension and social security. Karen had never felt so much an adult.
The service was nice enough, though it seemed over in a blink. Not that Karen had much basis for comparison. She tried to focus, but her mind kept wandering. Seated up front, she couldn’t see the people, but could hear murmurs behind her, appreciative chuckles as the minister mentioned endearing traits. Next to her, Clay sniffled. On the other side, Peter sat stiff and grim, and Mom slumped, sometimes nodding along, sometimes dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief.
Karen felt herself compartmentalizing the whole thing. That was the phrase her supervisor had used, off handedly mentioning the painful death, at age 32, of a close friend. She would be able to take it out, examine it, relive the thing and experience the proper emotions, sometime later. Soon, she told herself. Just not yet.
People gathered in the chapel after, a ragged receiving line forming around the immediate family. Karen was surprised, though she shouldn’t have been, at how many people were there. Dad had been a respected member of the community, Mom always had lots of friends, and clearly there were many people ready to support her. That made her feel better in a small way. I’ll take it, she thought, feeling newly mature at the knowledge she should appreciate those small graces wherever she found them.
Karen noticed that her friend Jackie Carlisle’s parents were both there. They had apparently grown more tolerant of each other in the years since their divorce, and came over to say hello together, son JJ between them. Now, that made her feel old. The former baby boy had morphed into a gangly, stringy haired teenager, taller than any of them. Jackie’s mom and dad each clasped her hands and spoke their kinds words, her mom specifically mentioning how much Jackie admired all the Emersons and that she sent her sympathy from her new home in New York.
JJ just stood there, spooky silent. Not so much uncomfortable with the circumstances as seeming far outside of it all, so far that they might all be a book he was reading, or a video game he had stumbled across. Karen remembered that thing he did, kind of making unspoken bargains with Jackie. And with her that time too. She felt a moment’s distaste at the recollection of that smarmy guy, her awful behavior, and swallowed hard. Unlikely JJ had the slightest recollection. As for Jackie, they hadn’t been in touch for awhile, though their old friendship still emerged when they saw each other. Karen usually made a point of seeking her out when she was in town, maybe a bit of guilt still tying her to her old friend.
The Carlisles moved on, both adults embracing her mom. Another older couple took their place, then another. Toward the end of that afternoon, Karen felt like her face would crack from sheer politeness. All those phrases repeated, our deepest sympathy, such a fine man, your poor mother. It was a simple pleasure to return to the house, to shoo Mom out of the kitchen and attempt to organize all the food.
The front door slammed, and she jumped. Then shook her head, reminding herself that she was all the way across the country from the aftershocks. No one had even talked about it, she realized. Of course she had talked to the folks right after she got her phone service back, the evening of the quake, and they had let everybody know she was fine. But it was weird, as if people here had already forgotten, or assumed everything was back to normal. One old lady, the widow of a former co-worker, had asked Karen whether she now intended to move home. I can’t, she had told the lady, I’m committed to my job, and things will be rebuilt. Only now, she realized, the woman may have been asking whether she would move back to stay with her mother, not whether she feared living in earthquake country.
Karen stacked together a set of serving dishes and utensils that were labeled with masking tape as belonging to a long time neighbor. (A fan of Hints from Heloise, Karen thought idly, a thoughtful lady with time to cook, a friend who had known the family for decades.) She could drop them off, she could use a little walk for exercise and just to get out of the house. Her brothers were zoned out in front of the TV, and Karen pulled on a coat and told them she would be back shortly.
Dusk already, the air cold and crisp in a near forgotten way. Karen gazed up at the dark silhouettes of the nearly bare trees against the sky. It was familiar and yet foreign too. The chilled air, bare trees, wide car-less streets, just the general lack of color anywhere. Had she already become a “California Girl,” as her former colleagues had teased her when she left? It wasn’t even winter yet.
Freezing, nonetheless. Karen walked with her head down, wishing she had thought to put on gloves. The neighbor wasn’t home – she could tell because the lights were out and no car in the driveway – but Karen knew the stuff would be safe inside the screen door. Such a nice thing, trusted neighbors, everyone with their own parking space. Their own cars, affordable houses.
In San Francisco, Karen was lucky to afford her shared place, and when she ever got a car, she would join the frustrated neighbors chasing down a parking spot. She had no idea who lived a block down the street. Not to mention the possibility of earthquakes!
Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that life back here was all in black and white. Not just the dull tones of a November dusk, but the lack of any sort of vibrancy here. Nothing in Pennsylvania, or Rochester, or Syracuse, where she had found her first post-college job, compared to her new home. Her actual home, she repeated in her head.
Back at the house, some semblance of normalcy had taken hold at last. Peter sat at Dad’s work desk with a bunch of papers and a calculator. Mom and Clay still had the TV on, and both were snacking on what appeared to be slices of whoopie pie. It could have been Christmas break, or high school. It was hard to imagine that Dad wasn’t just upstairs,
about to reappear, yawning but smiling, telling everyone he felt refreshed.
“This is nice,” Mom told the room at large, as Karen sat on her old spot on the couch, rubbing her hands to warm them. “Everyone here together. Despite it all.”
“It’s kind of weird though. Like Dad should be here too,” Clay said, his eyes darting Karen a nervous glance, as if wondering if it was okay yet to speak of him.
“I was just thinking that. Like Christmas break or something,” Karen assured him.
“We knew,” Mom began, than stopped for a moment. Karen and Peter exchanged a look.
“We knew going into it that I would most likely outlive him,” Mom went on, with the smallest of smiles darting across her face. “Even after you fall in love, you get your senses back eventually. It was something we discussed way back. When we got serious, I guess. Before he went to have a chat with my father, the way one did in those days.” Another tiny smile crossed her lips, as if she could even now picture that awkward meeting between these important men of her life. “But we decided that we would just accept it. Knowing I would live on after him wouldn’t change the time we had together. It didn’t. We would have wished for longer…” she faded out.
“Thirty years,” Karen said. “That’s pretty long to be married at least.”
Mom nodded. “I’m glad we celebrated our thirtieth. Even if your father didn’t want to make a fuss. It was a sweet little party. Our last, as it turns out, before all this.”
Karen watched her mom closely, worried she would finally break down. But she didn’t. She looked somehow more sure of herself than she had all week.
“Now, what about you two,” she said suddenly. “All this time together and we’ve barely had a chance to catch up. Karen? Clay? Anyone new I should know about?”
They all teased Clay for a few minutes – apparently a girl had answered the phone at his house and had extensive knowledge of his schedule, though he assured them she was just a friendly roommate.
Karen rolled her eyes at the question too. She had a not serious/no commitments guy she had been seeing. She hesitated to even call him a boyfriend, although that’s how she had previously described him to Mom. But it was just for fun, for convenience, two people both new to the area, exploring new places, sometimes tumbling into bed after. More convenient for him, Karen thought. He worked like half the hours she did, so he had plenty more time to meet other women and not be tied down.
While Karen’s work was really a priority, as she established herself at the firm, and they got a foothold in the Bay Area. Things in her life revolved around her office, she thought. Often as not, she was there at dinner time, and the food they ordered was better than the stuff she could afford or had time to make at home.
“I’m not really involved with that guy anymore,” she said, when Mom pressed about the faux boyfriend. “That was just this temporary, this flaky thing… And I’ve been so busy. We’re like a start up, that’s what they call the new high tech firms. You’re expected to work long hours.”
Mom wore her worried expression. Those tilted down lips and raised brows – Karen had seen them all week of course, with all the things on Mom’s mind. She hated to be one more worry. “There is this guy that I met at work,” she added, the words slipping out before she could stop herself. “He just got brought on to work on a project. But I mean, we need to work together. I don’t think he sees me as anything but potential competition really, or as just this girl who’s inexperienced and laughs a lot.”
“Oh my,” Mom said softly.
“What?” Karen stared at her mother. The guys had already stopped paying attention.
“Nothing. Just something in your expression just then. It reminded me of your father. Of us, way back.” She shook her head. “I’m projecting, just ignore me.” She paused. “But promise me you’ll let me know later. If anything does develop.”
Karen shrugged and nodded. She pictured Bill Roscoe for a moment, recalling the precise moment when they had met, how his expression had turned from surprise to pleasure to a mask of all business. Their eyes had lingered on each other too long, she knew that, and had been relieved when other people came into the conference room.
Obviously there was some attraction there. Bill, unlike a lot of people she knew, seemed serious. Or not embarrassed about being serious – he had a sly subtle sense of humor, she realized, but no need to flaunt it. And no need to march out there proclaiming himself one of the straight guys (somewhat few and far between at the west coast office). He was comfortable with who he was, and comfortable with everyone else too.
Karen turned back to her mom, wondering how much of her thoughts could be read on her face. She felt ashamed for a moment. Both of the inappropriateness – daydreaming about a virtual stranger the night of her dad’s service. And that this is what it took to shake her up, to make her think about him, about Bill. A death, an earthquake, giant reminders to grab onto what was important and leave the rest behind.