If the marine layer burned off, we had planned to spend the morning tracking the girls from the lower deck of the house. Mona had talked about using an inner tube, which would mean one of us joining her. In the afternoon Jane and I would have chipped away at Franny’s things, probably the vases, while the girls entertained themselves. Instead she had driven into a place where the signs seemed to be directing her to unlimited freedom, the tubing on the neon in good shape, no krypton leaks.
I walked through the oil stains on the concrete slab of the garage and left prints on the white linoleum. Heading upstairs, I was aware of the ocean caught in the panes of the French doors, the light. I went into Franny’s bedroom, and that was when I got into bed with Mike, and wrapped into sleep with him.
Before that morning, I had thought that certain feelings were invisible and stayed that way, that I could tunnel under and live off bomb-shelter air indefinitely. I hadn’t told anyone that I was in love with Mike. Jane and I had met him when we were in college. And then of course they became a couple and so on.
Over the years, I had sometimes found myself sleeping with men who reminded me of Mike. Maybe they loved horse racing, or felt uncomfortable in small rooms, or liked to fix things, or empathized too much, or maybe they just didn’t mind my storytelling, and even encouraged it. But I never held on to those men, never introduced them around or took them to familiar restaurants. Mostly they came through my loft in Chicago, looking for towels, razor blades, toast with preserves, and they didn’t understand that I was sleeping with someone else, sleeping right through them. They were small acts. Their bodies changed, they softened, and then a round of intense muscle building. The way they fixed on me, that changed too. And when I put my reading glasses on, they distorted entirely and became guys with names I couldn’t always remember.
Except for this man a couple of years ago, who pried open one of my eyelids, midact, and asked: Who am I? I thought that sex was jarring a metaphysical pin loose. I untangled myself and threw the lubricant back into the bedside table drawer. He accused me of having someone else on my brain, he could feel it. His old girlfriend: she had had someone else on the brain. I’m disappointed, he said. It was one of those moments when a man thinks he can put on your father’s jacket and parade around. I’m disappointed in you. He got up and found his clothes in a heap and left. It was raining, which almost added a note of tragedy to his departure. I watched him from my window. He was drenched when he hailed a taxi.
two
I don’t get many clear messages about the future. No crawls at the bottom of my mental screen. I would make a terrible oracle. But sometimes I know things. I knew when Franny was hit by the train. Well, I didn’t know that it was a train that took her out, but I knew she was out of life. And when you get that kind of sporadic but intense signal, it’s hard to understand how you can miss the obvious things. I missed things with Jane. I should have seen she would take off.
Two weeks before she drove away in the Jaguar, she had phoned me in Chicago. She asked if I’d go through the estate with her. We had lost Franny six months earlier, in the winter, so I had already gone out to California for the funeral. When Jane called, I was getting ready for an off-hours interview, hoping to pick up a gig in an auction house. Afterwards, I had plans to meet friends at a pub. I had been out of work for a while. It was a particularly bad time to make a second trip.
—You’re it, she said, as if we were playing a child’s game.
—I know a great appraiser in LA: Tony. Tony has four brothers and they’re all appraisers and they’d probably all come up to the house just to see it and . . .
—Things will go quickly, she said.
—I guess anything’s possible, but . . .
—I don’t want five guys named Tony.
—No, they’re . . . I know plenty of others. Some of the best.
—But that’s what you do, you go through stuff. You’re an expert.
I didn’t say: That’s like assuming you’re willing to mutilate yourself because you sell knives for a living.
Jane knew I didn’t want to be the one to break up Franny’s house. It had always been my catch basin, safe landing. Jane’s relationship with her grandmother had been held together by friction, and though no one ever said this, though no one fully implied it, Jane was blood and I was stray. And this created a particular sense of order.
I urged someone who would know West Coast values. Then I stood in the middle of my loft in Chicago, held the receiver against my ribs and with one hand hoisted a window open for air. The huge, original frames had been hauled up on a winch and set in place when it had been a button factory. They rode to the top with ease. I looked at the rain hitting my sill, the way it sprinkled the black skirt I wore and the hardwood floor, the spray red from the tail-lights going by. The rush-hour traffic headed from the Loop, the cab late. I put the tiny holes of the receiver to my ear again, looked at the unlit neon signs mounted on my walls. All she wanted was a week of my time.
—You still on the line? she asked.
—Sure.
—Mike and the girls will be there.
I was getting soaked.
—We can do a farewell party to the old place and you can drive the Jaguar while you’re out. . . .
I knew that one of Franny’s neighbors went over to the house weekly to start the motor and inspect the radiator fins flaking off in the salt air. I had always liked that car, and hoped Franny had had a rash moment and left it to me.
From my door-sized windows, I saw the taxi drive up and back, apparently struggling to find my address. But I’d never be able to change and get to the interview in time.
—This will probably be the last chance to be at Franny’s. Nan wants to rent it out until it sells.
No one liked Nan.
—You have to get the art out first, I said.
—That’s why we need you, to tell us that kind of thing. Did I say Mona asked about you? And Livvy. I think she’d like your company right now.
I doubted she had asked for me.
—Just for a weekend, to get you started, I said. Three days. Four at the most.
—I found a pretty good ticket online. But you’ll have to show a medical illness to back out. No refunds.
A few days later, at O’Hare, I ate a green banana, cottage cheese, and two rubbery eggs from a vending machine before the plane boarded. But I had some of my father’s genes, so I couldn’t make myself sick.
......
When I arrived at the Santa Barbara Airport, I chose a subcompact rental. Jane had offered to pick me up, but you have to have your own car in Southern California or you quickly become a dependent. I felt uneasy as I loaded my bags, and I decided to hold off going straight to the house.
Instead I took a detour to Mountain Drive, up in the foothills. I pulled over on a narrow turnout where I could see the city, the cemetery, a large avocado orchard, the marine layer sitting on the beach, the unlimited sky. The chaparral grows up the steep embankment, castor bean digs in everywhere. I thought of times I had spent with Jane: the joint passed across someone’s hot tub, the temperature gauge dropped back into the water. Ease, or something that once felt like ease.
I put the hand brake on and listened to the radio, wondered if I could put the battery at risk that way and stall out there permanently. When that didn’t happen, I went down the hill and drove through the grounds of the Miramar Hotel,