And I to swung one side
When the ghostly power began.
Then the Book stood up --
And I saw it was a Man.
For the great wind blows
through Ezekiel and John.
They are all one flesh
That the Spirit blows upon.
It took me ten days
to read the Bible through--
Then I saw what I saw,
And I knew what I knew.
Anna Hempstead Branch
“The mysteries remain,
I keep the same
cycle of seed-time
and of sun and rain;
Demeter in the grass
I multiply,
renew and bless
Iacchus in the vine;
I hold the law,
I keep the mysteries true,
the first of these
to name the living, dead;
I am red wine and bread.
I keep the law,
I hold the mysteries true,
I am the vine,
the branches, you
and you.”
--H.D.
She did dream, though no one believed she did. She did have dreams and visions although as far as her father and her uncle and her grandfather and her aunt and, yes, even her brother were concerned, she was a drab disappointment.
Because she felt like being honest with herself today, she even admitted that this was her doing. She had never been willing to let on that dreams were a part of her life. She had never told anyone that she wondered. In fact she had stopped wondering, plain and simple until the dreams had begun to return with greater frequency and with the vividness of oil colors. None of her girlfriends could help her. None of her old boyfriends would understand. She knew quite suddenly why the marriage between her mother and father had not worked out. She knew because she could not talk to her about this, because she had to go to her father. Dreams were his language and she needed to speak in them. Ah, but imagine, they were his language all the time and her mother had never been able to deal with them. No wonder she could not even remember a time when her parents were married. Always, in the history of her brain, they were divorced. They did not fight because they did not speak. It was as if Father had already been through the experience of opening his mouth to speak in a tongue Mother not only could not, but would not understand.
Now she woke up in the apartment so fresh from the dream that she could smell the pond water and the green of the lily pads and the lotuses. She lay on her back and sniffed and sniffed and detected roses for a brief second before the odor departed.
The odor was placed by the very real smells of the Renuzit plug in stuck in the wall to keep the air fresh, of the last of the wine in the glasses on the end table, of the man sweat and man flesh of Nelson Tolliver who lay on his stomach beside her, his arms splayed out, his mouth half open, snoring lightly.
She put on her glasses and looked over his handsome face. He was handsome, brown as semi sweet chocolate, and she traced a finger down his spine, ran it over his back. When she reached its small, it elicited an excited snore that made her grin. She was too lazy to make the coffee and didn’t know where he kept it anyway. She drew her knees to her chest and squeezed her thighs. She could still feel him. The on again off again inexplicable attraction she’d always had for Nelson. He began to blink and awaken and look at her as if he didn’t know where the hell he was.
“Feeb?” he croaked.
“Good morning, sunshine.”
“What time....?” and then, though he kept on talking, it was as if his voice gave out as his mouth shaped the words, “is it?”.
“5:45.”
“Five forty -- “he turned and looked at the digital clock and swore, “Well, then why the .... are we up? I’m going back to--”
“Nelson, I won’t be able to sleep again. I’ve got to meet my father this morning, and that’s all in my head too. I’d love you if you’d make me some coffee.”
Nelson reclined on his side looking exhausted and exasperated.
She said, “I mean I would love you even more than I do now. And worship the ground you walk on.”
Nelson sighed and padded out of bed. He did not bother to pull on his briefs. He just padded into the kitchen, long and naked and the warmth she felt watching his lean naked body leave the room and go into the kitchen was not lust. It was a different kind of heat. She felt innocent like they had reached the place of children who had nothing to hide.
A few moments later Nelson came into the room and reclined on the door frame, unashamed, and not showing off. He didn’t care. They were used to each other.
“Woman, your coffee is being made right now. You know where the cups are and everything else.”
“No, Nelly, I don’t think I do.”
“Everything else is in the refrigerator.”
“What about sugar.”
“Except the sugar which is conveniently placed in the sugar bowl.”
“Which would be?”
Nelson climbed back into bed and turned his back on her. “You’re really starting to try my patience, you know that?”
“Nelson?”
Nelson began to snore very loudly, and she punched him in the shoulder.
“Ouch!” Nelson sat up.
“I was asking you a question.”
“Well, I was trying to ignore you.”
“I noticed,” she said. “Do you.... ever have dreams?”
“What?”
“I had this dream and...”
Nelson turned around and rolled his eyes at her.
“Maybe.... I had better let you get the rest of your sleep in... Before I tell you about my dream.”
“Yes, maybe,” Nelson said, and turned over and went to sleep.
“That coffee smells so good,” she said.
This time he snored very loudly.
Even though it was six in the morning, she said, “Good night, Nelson Tolliver.”
He continued to snore.
“I said, “Good night, Nelson Tolliver.”
He turned around quickly, “GOOD NIGHT, PHOEBE MATTHEWS !!!
“Now can I please get some sleep?”
She nodded.
“All you had to do was ask.”
Though he had never voiced it, Nelson Tolliver was pretty sure that when she wasn’t waking him up to tell him something crazy and making him make her coffee, he loved Phoebe Matthews. Love was not something you spoke of lightly. To state it was to kill it, and things were so fragile and on again off again anyway.
So secret was the thing that they shared -- on occasion -- that no one knew Phoebe had arrived in town last night. This night had been totally for Nelson, whom she had needed to see. He admitted he needed to see her too. He was not jaded, just old enough now to know that every woman he met he slept with and none of them did much for his mind. When he was younger he had been more fascinated by his body, his sexual prowess, how much play he could get, how a good looking girl at his side reflected on him, than on actually falling in love with a woman. He had fallen -- hard -- a very few times in college. But this love thing had never really been for him.
Phoebe had always been for him.
He had discovered her quite by accident. She was Rush’s half sister, had not grown up with him, was only a small part of his life as far as Nelson knew. She was the child of Monterey’s Third Wife -- the Rational One. That was the name by which they all knew that woman. Rush’s mother had been Number Two -- the Crazy One. Monterey had tried to overcompensate, the result being three years and two children on different women.
But while Crazy Wife had in the end lost custody of Rush, Rational One kept Phoebe with her. Phoebe Matthews was in and out, sometimes talked about in conversation. The Rational Matthews. Though little more than that was said, being rational was so out of the pale of the Matthews that Nelson knew she must be awful.
She was three years younger. He had met her during his senior year when she had come to Rush’s graduation and Nelson had felt that same strange emotion he felt for Rush, the need to protect and be near. If Nelson were a reflective man he could say that at that stage in the game he felt exactly about Phoebe the way he felt about Rush.
When he was invited to family functions -- and this was always because the fact that you could breathe made you family to the Matthews -- he always looked for Phoebe. She was there once a year and he looked forward to their talks.
Three years ago, at Rush’s almost- graduation-slash-it’s-my-birthday party he had shown up late and, from afar, Nelson watched Phoebe and Rush talking with each other, so alike and so very different. In their glasses, in the ways they laughed. Then Rush had said something, grinned and pointed to Nelson, and Nelson’s heart had stopped as Phoebe crossed the lawn to come to him.
They chit chatted for a while and Nelson said, “This is what Rush would call, shooting the shit.”
Phoebe laughed.
“Rush said I should talk to you. He said you’d understand me.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Phoebe nodded. “He also said that you were hanging around waiting for me to say two words for you.”
“Well,” Nelson shrugged, feeling stupid, “Now you’ve said... fifty. At least.”
“At least,” Phoebe laughed.
“You know I’m gonna kill your brother.”
Phoebe laughed again and said, “Let’s not kill Rush tonight... Not when it’s his birthday and he’s trying to hook us up. He says we should go to a bar. I agree.”
“I thought you had a boyfriend.”
“I do, but Rush hates him. Come on.”
Phoebe gestured for Nelson to follow as she left the back yard.
So they went downtown to Finnegan’s, and Phoebe talked about Howard and how she should have gone to Georgetown cause at Howard she never felt Black enough, not around her boyfriend who was always trying to get her to wear braids and speak in Dinka or Swahili or something. Jayson had braids and talked about griots, Toni Morrison and reading Cornell West all the time.
“I mean, damn it, I’m sorry,” Phoebe said. “For me... I’m Black and that’s because when I wake up in the morning and look at myself I’ve got this big nose, this big ass and this dark skin. It’s not.... a religion for me. I already have a religion. And I don’t even practice it.”
“Black and frustrated and lapsed.” Nelson grinned at her.
“Yes!” Phoebe said. “And transferring schools. Is it going to sound really bad to you if I say I need to see some white people? I’m sorry, the world I grew up in had all sorts of people and here it’s just.... Well, it’s like if the Wehlans had to go to Amish University. Can you imagine that shit? Amish University? Or if the Blakes... had to go to... whatever the Blakes are. I need to be out with everyone. I want to be out with everyone. And with normal Black people. Not just my boyfriend and his friends reading the same damn books, talking the same way, putting their hair in dreadlocks and acting like white people even though they say they hate white people. I want some Black people in my life who eat Popeye’s fried chicken and say sho nuff!” and then Phoebe started to laugh at herself, and buried her hands in her face before muttering, “My God!”
When she looked at Nelson he said, “That’ why Rush sent you to me.”
Phoebe stopped laughing and looked at him, waiting for further illumination.
He smiled at her through his glasses and traced a finger around the rim of his drink.
“We both try so hard to be what we are,” he told her.
That night they returned to the apartment over his parent’s garage; the first place of his own. Phoebe said she liked it, and Nelson told her how he planned to move out into his own real space as soon as he was making enough. They drank a few beers because that’s what he had and then began to kiss and touch frantically.
When the heat was so much that the half of her that was a Matthews could see smoke coming from Nelson’s ears, and the smell of his body was deep and his kisses were hot and moist and she was hot and moist she said, “Do you have a condom?”
He did. They undressed quickly and made love hard on the couch, Nelson pounding into her over and over again, Phoebe’s thighs reaching up to pull him in, both of them growing louder and louder, spending themselves in the passion until Nelson felt himself coming and Phoebe, feeling him jackhammer quicker and quicker, realized what was happening and gasped.
Slow, slow. Together now.
They came together and lay tangled on the sofa, Nelson’s shoes still on, his slacks and underwear gathered about his knees. Her heels were on, the pins still in her hair, Phoebe’s brassier still fastened though her red dress was on the floor with Nelson’s shirt.
“I don’t want to move,” he gasped.
They lay like that, tangled and spent, the CD still playing on the radio, their beers still unfinished, the bright lights on. And then, in time, he brought her to the bedroom and turned the lights out. They undressed and went to sleep. In the middle of the night they woke up to each other and found release. Phoebe had been serious with two previous boyfriends. Her current one.... Yes, her current one… did not feel like this. In the small bedroom in Nelson Tolliver’s garage apartment she felt free for the first time.
That next morning they lay together and Phoebe said, “I have to get home.... Get to my room.”
Nelson lay on his side and said, “Are you afraid Daddy’ll find out where you’ve been?”
“Yes,” Phoebe said seriously. “And don’t tell me you aren’t.”
Nelson reached out to tell her. “Last night was--”
“Incredible,” Phoebe agreed crawling out of bed. The sun caught her caramel ass, the dimpled small of her back, the touch of red in her hair. “It was. It really was. But it was wrong.”
“Wrong?” Nelson sat up. He reached over and put his glasses on to get a better look at her.
“Yes, wrong. I have a boyfriend.”
“And I have a girlfriend.”
Phoebe’s eyes widened. “Well, then it was really wrong. I don’t know,” she was putting on what clothing had been taken off in this room and then moving to the living room for the rest of it. Nelson struggled out of bed, pulling on sweat pants.
“You don’t know what?” he said as she dressed. His arms were folded across his chest.
“Maybe... maybe... some wrong things should happen every once in awhile. Maybe people are more complex than just good and bad. I’m not a slut.”
“I know that.”
“But you are,” Phoebe went on. “And used to being one. You’ve got a girl, already.”
“It’s a bad relationship,” Nelson said.
“And my relationship could stand to be improved. And you know what? That’s what I’m going to do.”
Phoebe was pinning her hair up.
“I think that last night needed to happen. I needed to be with a real man who understood me. And you are a real man. God knows -- Jesus knows I haven’t felt like that since.... Ever,” Phoebe admitted. “And you get me and that’s great and--”
“And it was the same for me,” said Nelson.
“But now,” Phoebe went on, slipping into her heels, with difficulty, “I’m going to go back and make things work with Jason.”
“I don’t get that,” Nelson told her, crossing his feet and leaning against the wall, his arms still folded over his chest.
Phoebe bit her lower lip and said, “Nelson. To be fair.... You’re the third man I’ve been with in my life... and the only one night stand. You are one of my brother’s best friends. But me.... For you? I’m like your, what? Thousandth?”
“I haven’t been with a thousand women.” Nelson said, suddenly angry.
“Well, how many?”
“Ah…” Nelson started to count and then said, “Shit, I don’t know, Phoebe! Not right now at seven o’clock in the morning!”
“And that-- “Phoebe Matthews told him, “is just the problem. Now I’ve got to go,” she told him. And was out the door.
She was right, of course. Nelson had fucked an innumerable plethora of women all by his twenty-second birthday. They had come in and out of his bedroom in high school, his dorm room in college, his bunk when he was a summer camp councilor. He played around. They had come in and out of this garage apartment. A life without sex was as inconceivable to Nelson as a fish swimming in the desert.
But in all his years of thumping heads against backboards, no woman had ever got up, told him, “Goodbye. It’s been really nice. But you’re a ho, and this can’t work.”
Let alone a woman with whom he had fallen completely in love.
NOW THAT NELSON HAD TURNED TWENTY-FIVE, HE WAS ABLE TO ADMIT THAT A LOT OF THE SHIT THAT HAD OCCURED IN HIS LIFE WAS HIS OWN DAMN FAULT. He’d known better. Or if he didn’t know better he should have known better. Or there was always someone by his side to tell him better. And he was quick to reject good advice. He didn’t have a lot of good friends in high school because his mouth was too loose. He wanted so badly to be witty that he said stupid things and very few people trusted him. Dragonfly or not, he knew that for years Waverly and Rush had held him at arm’s length. Waverly hardly ever spoke to him at all. The friendship they had was more like family. Which sounds good, but this amounted to, you are my friend not because I trust you, would confide in you or find much of interest about you, but because we are tied by a bond of responsibility, time and persistence. And that was good. It was good to know that no matter what he would have these people in his life, but it also made him feel jealous of what Rush and Waverly had.
Nelson was unlucky sexually as well. He knew this was his fault. Standing there in his jogging pants the morning after Phoebe, watching her leave, was partially his fault. She was smarter than she let on. She had gone back to Washington. Rush told him that she was “making things work” with her boyfriend -- which Nelson took to meant she was fucking him. This was part of the bargain, having much worse sex, only half the sex she’d had with him in his bed.
Nelson was making his relationship with his current girlfriend work -- which only meant fucking her. Because there was nothing else to do. He liked her. He wanted her. He fucked her. At night, when lonely and vulnerable he clung close to her and made hard love to her again. He thrilled to hear his named called out, to hear himself calling out names, losing control, boiling over, biting the pillow. When morning came there was little use for her. Women had become like batteries or boxes of Kleenex or any other good for that matter. You took as much as you could out of them. And then one day there was just nothing left.
When a woman had a lot in her she stayed in Nelson’s bed a long time. Sometimes she had been so used already she was only good for one night. Sometimes she was only good for a drink and a half-hearted joke, but Nelson took her back to his apartment and fucked her quickly on the couch before sending her home. This was all after Phoebe as well as before. He had to be honest. He had given no sign of being a man who could commit.
But Phoebe Matthews.... Use was not even part of the vocabulary with her. Being with her he actually realized that what he had been doing was using women, and in some dim reflective part of his mind he knew this was wrong. It didn’t matter much to him, but he knew it was wrong. With Phoebe though, it was impossible to think of using her. He wanted to give himself to her. He wanted to love her. In the past -- and in the future he would roll over, look at a woman and think, ‘You need to leave. I need to disinfect this place. I’m glad I wore a condom. I’m thinking of getting a blood test anyway.’ Sometimes he thought, ‘I need to hit that shit again. And he would. A good morning screw to start off his day.
But with Phoebe he wanted to talk and go get breakfast and go to the park and listen to her ramble, and laugh and shoot the breeze. The morning she had walked out he had been crushed because all his bright plans for the good time they would have had been dashed away.
For the first sex had not been on his mind.
This morning Phoebe sat across from Nelson telling him about her dream while he pretended to be skeptical, taunting her and all the while pretended to like the coffee she had made for him after she had finished a whole pot of the brew he had put on before six this morning.
“And Nelson, this woman had red hair. Red like Rush’s. You know, that red brown, and it was all down her back. And she walked through water and there were white flowers in the water. Oh, Nelson, it was beautiful. And she had these green eyes and the most beautiful caramel skin. And I wanted to be her, and I asked her who she was, and she said, ‘I am your mother.’
“But I said, ‘I already have a mother.’
“But she said, ‘I am your mother. I am the one who brought you into this world.’
“And I shivered, Nelson. I thought, ‘She really is my mother!’ I never felt so mothered before. I never felt like such… a woman. I felt like I should go exhale and blow up a fucking car, or... hang out with the Ya-Yas. I don’t know… be a woman. I felt like I should get up and make love.”
Nelson frowned at her and said, “Now if you’d waken me up with that instead of saying make the coffee.”
She swatted Nelson on the shoulder and he grinned. When he did the grin went across her heart like a shock wave. She loved him. Certain times came when she knew that without a doubt. Nelson was the best friend and the best lover she ever had. Only she hardly ever had him. When she was with him she felt so alive. She knew better than to tell him this or he’d press the matter. Things would become serious and he probably couldn’t handle that. Phoebe knew that she couldn’t handle him not being able to handle them.
Nelson thought to himself as he took another sip of her too strong coffee, God, she can’t make coffee. She can’t cook. She’s gets more impractical by the day. She’d be a horrible wife. If she got pregnant I’d probably have to remind her to give birth she’s so goddamned scattered....
He continued with the litany of reasons she was unsuitable.
They were all true. None of them made him love her any less.
Waverly had been at work for less than twenty minutes when Ross came right to his desk and said, “I don’t know why you even bothered to show up today. You might as well pack your things and go.”
To make it worse, Waverly Blake was engaged in writing an e-mail when he looked up and said, “What? I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean,” Ross said, “You don’t have a job here anymore.”
Waverly moved his mouse around, clicked the send button, and then stood up and said, “Is this because I took off a few days.”
“Waverly you left on Wednesday,” Ross said. “It’s Tuesday. You just got up and left.”
“I had vacation time. I left messages. I meant to arrive here yesterday, but ...” he lied, “my car broke down.”
“You are making a scene in my office, Blake.”
“No,” said Waverly. “You made the scene when you came to my desk. I’m just helping out.”
“That would be a first. You’ve been a slacker sense the day you got here, Blake.”
“A slacker! How is a seventy-hour work week slacking? How’s overtime without pay slacking--?”
“Sitting here all day writing your e-mails. Don’t think I don’t know about that! Surfing the net and dreaming that you’re somebody. But you’re not anybody, Waverly Blake. You and your high and mighty education that you think entitles you to come in and walk out whenever you please without any notice.”
“I gave you notice!”
“When? On your cell phone? I never got a single one of those messages, and I have yet to hear the reason that you missed half a week of work.
“I was helping a friend out.”
Ross snorted, and cocked his head in derision.
“You were... Helping a friend out?”
“He called me. He said he needed me.”
“Well, how much did he pay you, Blake? Because I pay you to be here, not to run off and save your friends.”
“You’re unbelievable!” Waverly said, at last. “You wouldn’t even know what it’s like to have to come to some one’s side.”
“You know what, Blake?” Ross said after a moment. “When my old man died, my mother called me and told me about his funeral, that I really needed to be there. But it was Sunday, and it was four hundred miles away. I would have had to miss work the next day.”
“Let me guess? You didn’t go.”
“You’re absolutely right. And that’s why I’m here. It’s called work ethic.”
Waverly looked at him, amazed. The world did a sort of tip, and Waverly saw something though he couldn’t really name it. Then he said, “that’s not any kind of ethic. And.... I don’t know why I’m having this discussion with you.”
Waverly turned around and began emptying his desk.
“The only reason you’re here is because your old man got you this job,” Ross told him.
“This discussion,” Waverly told him, “is over.” He continued to empty out his drawers.
“The problem with your generation is you all don’t know anything about work or duty or real honor. This is the place you honor, Blake. Not your little friends. You don’t know what it’s like to have to work for anything. Your daddy just gets you--”
Now Waverly turned on him, and anyone who had pretended to be working now stopped and watched the skinny young man turn red and push Ross toward the wall. Waverly’s arteries bulged out as he slammed Ross into the wall.
“THIS.... DISCUSSION.... “ Waverly’s quavering voice stated, “IS OVER !”
And that was how Waverly Austin Blake lost his first job in the adult world.
2.
“But where is everybody?” Phoebe demanded when she was finally sitting down in the kitchen.
“Well, if by everyone you mean your uncle and your brother: they are off with Justin and Nelson’s sister and Fred’s boy,” Cecil said, “touring the country in a Buick. Shit’s gotten real strange around here. I mean stranger than usual,” said Cecil. “And people dying.”
“What?” Phoebe looked at her father.
“That’s enough,” Monterey said to Cecil.
“What do you mean people dying?” Phoebe said.
“I’m a hospice nurse. People are always dying,” Monterey told her. “This one is just somebody Cecil knows.”
“Oh, Granddad, I’m sorry.”
To cover up what he’d almost revealed, Cecil smiled and said, “Well, at my age who the hell isn’t dying that I know?”
“You’re not getting older, you’re getting better,” Phoebe told him.
“No, I’m getting better and I’m getting older, and there’s just no way around that.”
“How long are you here?” Monterey said. Then, “Why are you here?”
Phoebe raised an eyebrow.
“Not that I don’t want you,” Monterey explained. “Just that you usually don’t want to be here. So…” Monterey shrugged.
“No,” said Phoebe. “I’m here as long as you’ll have me. I mean, school is out.”
“It was a nice graduation,” Monterey said neutrally.
“It was stuffy as hell. You should have gone to Sainte Terre,” Cecil shook his head. “The only thing worse then getting in that goddamned airplane was getting in a goddamned airplane to fly to Howard and the only thing worse than getting in that goddamned airplane to fly to Howard was getting in the goddamned airplane, and flying to that goddamned Howard to sit next to that old witch also known as my third daughter-in-law. No, Monterey, Teresa proved that the third time certainly was not the charm.”
“Well, how many times did he manage to get goddamn in that one paragraph?” Monterey asked his daughter.
“I counted three.”
“You’re off, Feebs. It was four.”
“I was going to say that goddamned Teresa,” Cecil said. “But then I decided... she’s your mother and all. Tell me,” Cecil asked his granddaughter, “I never understood why you chose to leave us and live with that witch.”
Phoebe looked embarrassed and Monterey said, “Dad!”
“Well, now you’ll never ask, but I always wanted to know, and I won’t live forever,” Cecil said.
Before Phoebe could say anything, Monterey said, “It is not an incontrovertible fact that Teresa is a witch.”
“Yes, it is,” Cecil said. “The only good thing that came out of that marriage was Phoebe. The woman was a witch and Phoebe, I just want to know why you chose her over your daddy. I know little girls are supposed to want their mamas, but....” Cecil shrugged.
Phoebe looked at her grandfather, and then at her father who was looking at the table.
“I think that was why. I was supposed to. It was so long ago, really. I was supposed to, Grandad. And... you all had so much. Mama only had me.”
“That’s because she was a--”
“That’s enough, Cecil,” Monterey put up a hand. Cecil nodded and acquiesced.
Just then the door opened and Waverly came though looking even whiter than usual.
“Wave,” Monterey said in a quiet, worried voice, but Phoebe, not picking up on his mood shouted, “Waverly!” and ran to hug him When he parted from her he said, “Oh, Phoebe, you look so good!”
“But, you don’t,” Monterey said, calling everyone’s attention to what he had first seen.
“What’s up?”
Waverly stood there, his sleeves rolled up, his hair sticking out, holding a cardboard box of crap. He looked like he had to remember what was going on.
Then he grinned lopsidedly and said, “I just got fired, and this lousy cardboard box is all I have to show for it!”
“OKAY, WAVERLY, ALL CARDS ON THE TABLE, I’M WORRIED ABOUT YOU,” SAID MONTEREY OVER LUNCH, though he realized, All cards are not on the table. I know something more. Something that will tip your world over the edge.
Monterey had known Waverly since he was an infant and Justin had come around proudly showing off his baby brother.
“I’m fine. I’m strong,” Waverly told him and told Phoebe, but whatever Phoebe saw, Monterey remembered the baby and the toddler and the fact that in some ways Waverly at twenty-three resembled Waverly at ten or Waverly at twelve. The job gone. Agnes dead and now Waverly’s father. For so much to come down at once… No one should have to bear it. Monterey pushed out of his mind that much more had happened to him before he was twenty-three.
“Well, yes,” Monterey allowed. “You’re strong enough, I suppose. But only if you don’t try to take on everything on your own... All your upset on your own. I’m not asking you to cry on my shoulder or anything. I don’t go in much for that, anyway. But this is not the house to keep a stiff upper lip in.”
Waverly reached over and touched the older man’s hand. “Monterey, I know that. That’s why I came here. I... I wish Rush and Cass were here.”
“Me too,” Phoebe said. “But I guess for my own reasons. Maybe you should talk to Nelson.”
Waverly shook his head, “Nelson and I never talked about that stuff. I don’t think he would understand.
“I think he would,” Phoebe said. And then, at the curious look on Waverly’s face and the questioning one on Monterey’s, she dropped the subject. Neither one of them knew that she had been here last night, let alone in Nelson Tolliver’s bed. Or that this wasn’t the first time.
“You missed the whole castigation bit,” Phoebe jumped back to an old subject, making her eyes sparkle and telling Waverly about Cecil demanding why she’d chosen to live with her mother.
“It’s not funny, not really,” she said, looking at her father.
“No, divorce usually isn’t,” he told her. “And that’s certainly not any of your fault, and all of mine.”
“But,” Waverly said, “that is a good question.... Why did you come back?”
Phoebe shrugged, but when she looked at her father knew that wouldn’t work. She found herself turning serious under Monterey’s gaze and said, “Daddy, I have to tell you something.”
“Yes?”
“When I had to choose where I wanted to go--for good, after the year I came to live with you—Mama said that you were… not safe. Not,” she said at his raised eyebrow, “like you were bad or sick or something like that. Not that you’re not safe the way a child molester is unsafe. She said that you weren’t safe like a fire isn’t safe... Or a natural force. That you weren’t tame enough for her. And she told me that I should always be safe, and you would never let me... Be safe. Which now that I think about it means she wanted me to play it safe... And she knew you wouldn’t allow that.”
“No, she was right about that,” Monterey said. “I would have tossed you in the backyard and let you grow up like the other wildflowers. And if I saw a problem, I’d help.”
“Well,” Phoebe said at last,” the problem is that I have been too safe for too long. I don’t really know how to... get a life started, really live. I can get a nice little job and a nice little boyfriend, but... Oh dear, this isn’t easy.”
“I’m here. Don’t worry.”
“Daddy, I want to be on fire. I... What if I told you that once I loved a man who set me on fire. More fire than I’d ever had, that I had all this passion once, and I got rid of it because it wasn’t safe and all the boyfriends you saw me with were bland.”
“I would say you had been a fool.”
“Well, that’s just it,” Phoebe said. “Any other father would want me with a safe boy. That’s why mama wanted me to go with her.”
“But I want you to be happy,” Monterey said, taking his glasses off, and polishing them with the corner of his shirt. “I don’t want you to make me happy by being bland and tame.”
“I know !” Phoebe said. And that’s why I’m here. To learn to cut wild. A little, at least. And live. Even if just a little.”
“A little is a good place to start.”
All this time Waverly had been looking sort of wistful and halfway stupid. Now Monterey said, “What’s with you?”
“I-- “Waverly said. “I’m guilty of just the same thing. I felt so free this weekend. On the road doing what I wanted to, doing what I needed to do. And I realize I really have let myself go. I mean, really....” his voice trailed off.
“I keep having this dream,” Phoebe said, “of a red headed woman…” And Phoebe told it, though she did not tell that she’d had it in Nelson’s house.
“I see her a lot in dreams. Much of the time she is ahead of me. Now and again she turns back to me. In the dream she said, she was my mother. I said I already had one. But she shook her head and told me, No. She had brought me into this world.”
“Amazing,” Waverly said.
“Who was it?” said Phoebe.
“I don’t know,” Monterey shrugged, feeling that he should know.
When Phoebe showed up at Frances’s house, she was as surprised to see Emily as Emily Wehlan was to see her. She set about telling both women her idea, knowing she could trust them.
“So basically,” said Frances, “you want to pretend that you’re spending the night with me and Emily so that-- “
“You can have a sleepover at Nelson’s house?’
Phoebe colored and said, “I don’t know what it’s going to be,” Phoebe said. “But I’d just like to not look at my watch and think: ‘Midnight. My father’ll wonder where I am.’ ”
“Of course,” Emily suggested, “if he really wants you to be more wild, maybe he’ll be thinking, ‘Two a .m. I hope my daughter’s getting in on.”
Frances frowned at her niece. “Are we talking about the same Monterey Matthews?”
“You’ve got a point,” Emily agreed.
“So we’re lying to your father?” Frances said.
“No,” Phoebe told her. “I’m lying to my father. You’re just my alibi, and I thought you should know.”
“I didn’t even know you had a thing with Nelson,” Emily said, amazed. Frances had made strawberry daiquiris, and Emily Wehlan sat, dipping her half frozen strawberry in and out of the froth before finally sucking on it.
“I didn’t know either,” Phoebe said. “I didn’t know a whole lot. I’ve been out of step along time.”
“This must be the summer that everyone is coming into step,” said Frances. “I mean, everyone getting up and traveling and soul searching and... Well, Waverly needs to soul search. Poor jobless bastard.”
“Did you know Ara and Waverly have something going on?” Emily said brightly.
“What? Ara Tolliver?”
“Um hum,” Emily nodded. “Two of you could be related one day. I never thought of that.”
Phoebe made a sour face at her.
“Wait a minute,” said Frances, who was busy making incense sticks for the shop. “I didn’t know about Ara and Wave.”
“Well,” Emily said, “it’s not really official yet. I mean, Ara’s holding out. Or something. But Waverly wants something to happen.”
“Well, seeing as Ara’s off with Cassidy and my brother and your brother on the other side of the country, and Waverly’s huddled under a blanket crying his eyes out, I don’t see that happening.”
“Is Waverly really crying his eyes out?” Frances said.
“Who said something about Waverly crying his eyes out?”
There was a new voice as Shawn Camden entered the house.
“Nothing,” Phoebe said. “No one is crying their--”
“Phoebe!” Shawn ran to hug her. “Oh, you look real nice. How’s the boyfriend?”
“Jason. Um... ask me later.”
Shawn nodded. He understood bad relationships. Even though he was till holding her he turned to Frances and Emily. “And who is crying his eyes out? Waverly? No wonder with so much crap--”
“He lost his job,” Frances said tersely. “His boss called him a worthless slacker. Actually I think he was upset because Waverly is good friends with his wife. That’s never a good idea. And ... lots of stuff.”
“Poor Waverly,” the look of concern across Shawn’s face was almost comical. “I should go to him.”
“You should leave him alone,” Frances said.
“But if he’s crying his eyes out--”
“My God, Shawn, no one’s crying their eyes out!” Frances cried. “Except me. I’m about to cry my eyes out if you don’t sit down and stop stressing the hell out of me.”
Shawn cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow on his handsome face.
“You don’t have to be that way, Franny Wehlan.”
“Obviously I do,” she said, slamming down sticks of fresh made incense and rearranging their positions. “Because no one shuts the hell up unless I am that way.”
She got and headed for the kitchen.
“I need a beer,” she muttered.
“Get me one too,” Emily shouted back.
“You got legs, sister!” was what they heard Frances shout from the back of the house.
Shawn leaned in and whispered, “I still think that we should go over and talk to Waverly. That’s what friends are for. We should go later tonight.”
“Phoebe can’t,” Emily said, keeping her face perfectly innocent. “She’s got a slumber party.”
Two of us riding nowhere
spending someone’s hard earn pay
you and me Sunday driving
not arriving
on our way
back home
we’re on our way home
we’re on our way home
we’re going home!
Justin Blake sang into the sleeping Delorian’s ear as they rode side by side, the Greyhound trundling over the long stretch of Kansas.
“What?” Delorian shook himself awake groggily.
“You and I have memories longer farther than the road ahead,” Justin sang on.
“You are truly unhinged,” Delorian told him, and bent to rummage through the book bag between them. “I need a Ho Ho and some water. “Now that I’ve talked about water. I have to pee.”
“I’ll move.”
“No, not right now,” said Delorian. “I’m too lazy for it. I can wait awhile. By the way the line is You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.”
“I am so glad you’re traveling with me so I can get all my Beatles songs right.”
“Someone’s gotta make sure you don’t fuck up the classics. If you’re a good boy,” Delorian took a swig of water, “We can do Across the Universe.”
“So loudly that it pisses everyone off?”
“And we get tossed of the bus in the middle of Kansas, and then have to hitchhike to Missouri on the back of a tractor. Yeah, sounds good.”
“And then we can thumb a ride to Saint Louie -- where we’ll meet--”
“Judy Garland.”
“Exactly, and she and her friends can get us back to Indiana--
“By us going over the rainbow.”
Justin broke into a little girl’s voice and said, “And you were there, and you were there, and oh…. You were there. Only you were a scarecrow!”
They did all of this with straight faces and Delorian said, “No one would guess we were forty.”
“Speak for yourself, old man. I’m thirty-nine. That’s what I’m sticking too.”
“And next year?
“I’ll be thirty-eight. I’m perfecting a special magic charm which will make me get only younger. But I’ll stop at twenty-one, and then age up again to thirty-nine.’
“Perpetually evading forty.”
“That’s the plan.
“Forty’s not so bad.”
“Well, maybe I’ll stop at forty-five. Till I get to be Fred and Monty’s age.”
“How do you think Fred’ll feel when we come back and tell him Nate’s off in New Mexico.
“Oh…” Justin thought for a moment. He decided, “He’ll be cool about it. He’ll be glad his only son’s out adventuring.”
“Well, now, my father might feel that way, but I don’t know. Fred’s always been very protective of Nate.”
“Well,” Justin said, “I guess it really won’t matter. We don’t have him and that’s that. Let go, Freddy.”
I can’t wait to tell him that,” Delorian said.
“I know you can.”
“Well, then I can’t wait to hear you tell him that.
“Funny,” Delorian mused. “To think of Fred with children, being the protective father type.”
“Yeah,” Justin agreed. “Almost as funny as me being that way. I mean, you’d think Nate and Emily just popped up yesterday. Still have a time imagining Fred as their dad.”
“Eat all your vegetables, they’re good for you,” said Delorian.
“A doobie a day keeps the bad vibes away!” chimed in Justin.
Delorian noted: “That is the difference between the Fred we grew up with and the Fred Nate and Emily grew up with.”