Holding her hair back with one hand, Rima read an informational marker that showed the line of the coast all the way up to San Francisco. Although she’d seen the curves of Monterey across the water almost every day now, she felt she’d never completely understood that Santa Cruz was on a bay. There was nothing bay-like about the large waves of Steamer Lane. The cliffs were a tumble of rocks, and it looked to Rima as if here was the place a ride would end, and end badly.
A three-foot-high restraining grille ran along the cliff edge. Beyond the grille was a sign saying that since 1965, ninety-two people had drowned along the coast.
Don’t Be Next.
Respect the Ocean.
Stay Inside the Fence.
Beyond the sign, two boys in baseball caps were smoking something that had to be passed from cupped hand to cupped hand. They couldn’t have been any older than middle school. Kids in middle school were very self-absorbed, in an I’m-an-immortal-with-bad-skin-so-don’t-look-at-me kind of way. They probably hadn’t even stopped to think how someone like Pamela Price could come up right behind them and give them a push.
The air was cold and the sun bright. There were maybe twenty wetsuited surfers in the glittering water, and at least a dozen spectators watching from above. One of the surfers was an old man with white hair and a long white beard. He looked like Santa Claus in a wetsuit, if Santa Claus ever got himself seriously into shape.
Cody found a spot along the railing. He’d brought binoculars, and occasionally he pointed to something, gave Rima the binoculars to look. She never knew what she was being shown. She trained the binoculars on the waves themselves, the explosion of white, the sculpted curve, which magnified like this had facets like a jewel.
“What an asshole,” Cody said. Apparently he could see assholery even without the binoculars, while Rima, with them, could not. She gave the binoculars back. A surfer stood, went down. Another paddled to catch a wave that slipped from beneath her board. Rima saw several rides that defied belief. Who would look at the ocean, the crashing surf, and think, I bet if I had a plank I could stand up in that? Rima added surfing to her list of heroic firsts. The first person to swan-dive. The first person to eat an artichoke. She watched the surfers, all of them dressed like seals, rising and falling in the water.
Eventually she tired of awesome athletics, as one inevitably does. The wind whipped her hair against her cheeks, and the light was too bright. She went to sit on one of the nearby benches, but there were words carved into the seat and back; she ended up reading it instead. Mark David Alsip. Sit on a happy bench. This last sentence was punctuated with happy faces.
There were several more annotated benches. Rima worked her way down the sidewalk, reading them all.
Arnette, Sam, Scott, Cindel. Forever.
Judy Maschan: Mother Teacher Friend. Do Your Dream.
Robert “Camel” Douglas: Feel free to love—appreciate the beauty and wonder in life.
Bob Richardson: You will always be with us in beautiful memories.
In Memory of Ron MacKenzie. He Knew How to Keep Christmas Well. Illustrated with holly. The cliff was one long, copacetic graveyard.
A hand on her shoulder made her jump, but it was only Scorch. They left Cody at the railing and walked across the curve of West Cliff Drive into Lighthouse Field State Park. Over here the ecosystem was completely different. On one side of the road, gulls and kelp. On the other, crows, eucalyptus, and pine.
They followed a muddy path past trees whose branches formed caves in which homeless people could leave their blankets during the day. Scorch told Rima that this was an off-leash area for dogs in the mornings, and also a monarch butterfly sanctuary, two uses that didn’t seem to go happily together. Rima should come back when the butterflies came, Scorch said.
Because she was from Cleveland, Rima assumed the monarchs would come in the spring. She couldn’t possibly impose on Addison that long. She felt a momentary panic at the thought of leaving Wit’s End.
They crossed over a creek on a little wooden bridge. “Addison took the line about Maxwell Lane off Wikipedia,” Rima told Scorch. “Just like you predicted. But this morning when I looked, it was back again.”
“An edit war,” Scorch said. She sounded pleased. “Not Addison’s first! I’m sure she’s set things up so she gets e-mail notification whenever a change is made. Probably the other person has too. That line will go in and come out and go in and come out.”
The path led from the dark wet under the trees into a bright, brittle field. Rima saw how it would all turn to green. She saw how spring would spill across the fields and spread into bird nests and wild flowers. And there Addison would still be, hunched over her desk, locked in her eternal struggles, just like Star Trek, while the world went green around her.
“At least until someone appeals to admin to lock the page. And everyone involved has egg on their faces,” Scorch said.
They were headed back now, toward Cody and the cliffs.
“I checked the history page,” Rima said. “It’s someone calling themselves Hurricane Jane.”
“Yeah?” Scorch shaded her eyes with her hand to look at Rima. “She’s a poster on Addison’s site. Active. Kind of a troublemaker, but I guess you don’t call yourself Hurricane Jane for nothing.”
Down by Rima’s ankle was a rock with a plaque embedded in it. Rima stopped to read. This rock is dedicated in loving memory of Rita Collier-Micuda. My wife and best friend. She was temporarily forever mine. January 9, 1962-December 17, 2000.
Such a short forever mine. But longer than Rima had had Oliver. Rima wondered if Oliver would like a rock. Or a bench. There was a world of memorial possibilities she’d never considered.
“Did you check out the Wikipedia talk section?” Scorch asked.
“No.”
“You’re supposed to explain your edits in the talk section.”
“The thing is,” Rima said. “The thing is. I don’t get it. There’s really no reason to think Maxwell Lane grew up in Holy City. And lots of reasons to think he didn’t.”
They paused to let two cars go by before crossing the street. There was a passenger in one of the cars, a woman who seemed to be staring at Rima, but was no one she recognized. A man in a blue windbreaker was on the lighthouse lawn, feeding French fries to the gulls. They circled him, dipping and shrieking.
“Then it shouldn’t be on Wikipedia,” Scorch said.
(2)
Rima had been eleven years old when the Maxwell Lane TV show called The Mind of Maxwell Lane first aired. It was scheduled opposite MacGyver, which meant Rima had never seen it. Now it was in syndication. She told Addison at dinner that she thought she’d like to watch it.
Addison paused, a forkful of salad suspended in air over her plate. She shook her head. She had never liked this star. He was, she said, less like Maxwell Lane than any other Maxwell Lane ever had been—too cleft-chinned and square-browed, too Southern Californian, too emotionally fragile, too unsuspecting. Really, what passed for cynicism in the mind of a screenwriter wouldn’t get a novelist past chapter two.
But there was nothing else on. Rima was certainly welcome to see for herself.
That afternoon it had begun to rain, and it rained harder as night fell. Rima had always loved hearing the rain from someplace warm and dry. Wit’s End was hushed and lovely, the windowpanes and gutters singing, the ocean pulsing like a giant heart. Rima had pictured an intimate evening, just her and Maxwell and a dead body or two.
Instead, Addison and Tilda joined her. Addison drank a shot of whiskey, which tonight she said she needed because of the show. By the first set of ads she was snoring.
Tilda went to bed. The Maxwell Lane who was less like Maxwell Lane than any other Maxwell Lane ever had been was trapped in a sauna with the door jammed shut from the outside. This happened to be a particular phobia of Rima’s, which was why you never saw her in one.
The actor was campy and sardonic. Sarcasm without wit. Rima had once taught middle sch
ool; she’d had enough sarcasm without wit to last a lifetime.
She would never have wasted a minute dreaming about this Maxwell Lane. When Addison had been awake, she’d made snarky comments about the dialogue, the clothes, even the camera work. Minus these comments there was nothing about the show for Rima to enjoy. She turned the TV off and left Addison sleeping in the chair. Maxwell had been rescued from the sauna by a young woman wearing only a towel, but a faint claustrophobia clung like perfume to Rima. In the attic above her head, the ghostly footsteps circled.
Rima turned on the reading lamp in her room, sat in the chair, and opened the box of Maxwell’s letters, looking for more of Constance Wellington’s onionskins. She felt closer to her now that she knew Constance was a dead person. At the same time, Rima felt a loss. She hadn’t expected Constance to be alive, but she’d hoped. She had such an impulse to like her she had to keep reminding herself that Constance was a white supremacist. Cody wouldn’t have forgotten for a minute, nor should he have.
The postcard with the Watsonville Cowboy Wranglers was still on the top. Rima read it again.
Regarding my letter of July 2, you know how cats sometimes engage in heroic battles with imaginary enemies? Am persuaded I’ve done the same. Please disregard.
“What you need,” Maxwell Lane suggested, “is the letter of July second.”
Rima dipped into the box, stirred through the papers. She caught sight of the Holy City address on a yellow envelope. Inside was a card. Underneath a picture of a little birdie were the words: “A little birdie told me.” And on the inside, the little birdie’s beak was opened wide. “That someone special is having a special day. Happy Birthday!” it was saying. Followed by Constance Wellington’s signature.
Rima found a second onionskin letter, still in the envelope, pulled it out and read.
21200 Old Santa Cruz Hwy
Holy City, California 95026
April 2, 1978
Dear Maxwell Lane:
Did you forget me? Been a while. Kitten season in the mountains! From where I sit, can see a pretty little Siamese minx climbing up the curtain. Two babies, one ginger, one black, wrestling under the reading lamp. Another black dozing on the paperback Roger Ackroyd. Two calicos nursing on mama. Interest you in any of the above? Perhaps the bookish one? They do lighten your mood.
Finished Average Mean on Tuesday and have been thinking about it ever since. Excellent, excellent work. I salute you! Bet there aren’t many men who know as much about putting up vegetables as you. We used to do some canning here. Old days. Over and gone. Move along, as our boy Bim used to say.
The police came through last week and rousted the hippies again. No doubt they’ll come creeping back like ants. Maybe lucky so many buildings were burned at the end; fewer places to squat. Can’t help but wonder what old Father Riker would have said about these dirty young men with their bare feet and long hair. He would have had kittens. (Ha, ha.)
Back to your book! Clever of you to notice the mysterious traveling umbrella. Excellent work on the dead ficus. Got lucky on the dry-cleaning stubs, had those practically handed to you, but you saw what you had. Really cannot fault you at any point. Bravo, Mr. Lane! Bravo, indeed!
VTY,
Constance Wellington
What I need, Rima thought, is some organization. Tomorrow she would go to an office supply store, buy some folders or those clear plastic envelopes, get methodical.
Of course, that would cost money. This reminded her that her wallet was missing, so she put the letter and cards back in the box and searched all through her room, the closet floor, the drawers, the bedclothes.
She went downstairs to look in the TV room, even though there was no way it could possibly be there. It was late, so she moved on the stairs as quietly as she could. The rain outside was louder now. Wit’s End creaked and cracked. She pushed open the door. The blue light of the aquarium shone dimly.
Rima turned on the lamp. Tilda was sitting in Addison’s chair, holding Addison’s empty whiskey glass. It would be hard to say who was the more surprised. “What are you doing?” Tilda asked. There was a snappish tone to her voice.
“I lost my wallet,” Rima said. “I’m just looking everywhere I’ve been.”
Tilda stood. She picked up her own teacup with the hand that wasn’t holding Addison’s glass. “Did you check the pockets of the pants you wore yesterday?”
The house shuddered suddenly. The rain fell. Air bubbled into the aquarium; the murdered diver swayed like a dancer in the water. Tilda remained standing, holding the dirty cup and glass, until Rima turned and went back up the stairs. She was left with the distinct impression that Tilda had prevented her from searching the room.
Even though the pocket of the pants she’d worn yesterday was exactly where the wallet proved to be.
(3)
The clouds dipped lower and lower all night, and by morning Wit’s End was wrapped in fog. Rima saw it drifting across the window and thought for the briefest moment that it was smoke, that there was a fire somewhere close by. She lay in bed until Berkeley heard Scorch and Cody arriving, and she made it downstairs in time to join the morning walk. Addison was out back. Tilda had gone to her twelve-step meeting.
Rima still didn’t have shoelaces. She wore her pumps down to the sand and then took them off and left them by the steps. The sand was damp and cold under her feet.
She had never seen the beach look so dirty. She’d figured out that the color of the water depended on the color of the sky; today the sky was solid cloud and the water a surly green. Bunches of kelp had been left by the tide, and tangled up in one was a dead gull, breast up and bedraggled. Also two beer cans, half a tennis ball, and, not in the seaweed but nearby, a plastic bag of dog shit with a twist tie. Good Times had recently carried a claim that the water was full of E. coli, and Rima thought she could see that.
The storm had scattered the surf; the waves were short and chaotic. Even so, there were people in the ocean. Two men in wet-suits and kayaks muscled their way through the chop to deep water. On the beach, a young woman wearing yellow shorts and a sweatshirt with the UC Santa Cruz banana slug on it jogged on the wettest sand. When a wave came in, she was in the water, kicking up a spray, and when it went out, back on the sand. She was running at a truly impressive speed.
Rima had tried jogging after Oliver died. She thought it would be smart to get physically exhausted. She thought if she were body-tired instead of, or along with, feeling the heavy exhaustion of grief, she might think less. But the effort involved in lifting her feet over and over was too much for her. Later she tried again, but found she’d been mistaken in her primary assumption. All you did when you ran was think. She hated it.
A man scanned the sand with a metal detector. He paused, dug, pocketed something small. There was a Doberman on a leash, a bull terrier off. Two basenjis and a Bernese mountain dog. Rima was good with dog breeds. For a while, when she was about thirteen and Oliver about ten, they’d shared an enthusiasm for the Westminster dog show. By the time he turned twelve, Oliver wouldn’t watch anymore. He’d decided it was all about eugenics.
There was a little girl on the beach, wrapped like a starfish around her father’s leg. She was wearing rain boots and a purple raincoat that had green scales, like a dragon or a dinosaur, stitched on the back and over the hood. Her face under the spiky hood was cross. She was the crossest dragon Rima had ever seen. When she saw Rima looking at her, she shot Rima with her finger.
Such were Scorch’s powers that she had persuaded the dachshunds to shift their interest from the dead bird to the half tennis ball, which was now being reduced to smaller pieces. Half of a half of a half of a tennis ball. Zeno’s paradox.
Scorch was doing less well with Cody. Her family, she told him, was going to Yosemite for Thanksgiving and he’d been invited, only he’d have to share a cabin with her two brothers and pretend he and Scorch had never had sex.
Cody shook his head. Nothing about that said Thanksgi
ving to him. “Where are you going?” he asked Rima.
She said she’d been trying not to think about it. In fact, until Scorch and Cody brought it up, she’d been completely successful in not thinking about it. It hadn’t crossed her mind that she had to go somewhere. Was Addison expecting her to? Suddenly the holidays were descending like a foot on an anthill.
A dark man in a turban was facing the ocean, gesturing to the waves with one hand while holding several sheets of paper in the other. Rima couldn’t hear him over the water, but he was saying something. From time to time, he glanced at the pages.
Rima could always go to one of her aunts’, assuming there was an affordable airline ticket available. She really didn’t want to. Too much family in her aunts’ houses. The only Thanksgiving Rima thought she possibly could make it through was a Thanksgiving with no family in it.
They drew closer to the man in the turban, close enough that Rima began to hear him. His voice was trained and melodic.
“. . . all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air,” he said. “And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples . . .”
Thanksgiving had been her mother’s favorite holiday. Thanksgiving is the holiday, her mother used to say, when everyone gathers in the strays and orphans. Rima had never thought to be the orphan at the table.
“. . . the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and, like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind.”
To Rima’s horror, she was in full sob again before she knew it, and again the breakdown was occurring in front of Cody and Scorch, should they only turn to look. She spun about without a word and walked back quickly, climbed the stairs to Wit’s End, climbed the stairs to her third-floor room. She closed the door behind her, collapsed soddenly onto the bed. She hoped Scorch and Cody would imagine some other reason for her leaving so abruptly, maybe simple rudeness.