Serpentine Page 14

  When Annabella was graduated from high school, her parents gave her a second trip to Europe. This time Jane went along, ostensibly to visit the relatives in Italy but to keep an eye on her daughter as well. At the end of the designated month, Jane had to return home, where her job as a bookkeeper was waiting. “I can’t go back, Mama,” said Annabella. It was not a request, rather a statement of fact. Jane did not even argue with Annabella; she only insisted that her daughter stay in constant touch and to telephone collect if a problem arose. Back home, Dick complimented his wife on her decision. “I know it was hard for you to do,” he said, “but let her wander. Let her get it out of her system. It’s her life, not ours.” Besides, her money would run out before very long, predicted Dick.

  He was wrong. Annabella stayed two years in Europe and the Middle East, always finding temporary work to sustain her wanderlust. She sold rugs at a tourist shop in Athens at the foot of the Acropolis; she worked as a nurse’s aide in Madrid emptying chamber pots and dressing wounds—and reading Hemingway; she sold Herald Tribunes in Paris, she taught English in Istanbul. It was the mid-1960s, and everywhere could be found nomadic young Americans, drifting through the season of discontent. In California, Jane was on edge. She wrote Annabella letters several times a week, all variations on a continuing theme: Come home.

  “I want her back,” said Jane to her husband. “She’s my only child.”

  “And mine, too,” said Dick. “But she’s grown and we have no right to conduct her life for her. A person should be allowed to do what she wants, as long as she’s not hurting anyone else.”

  Annabella returned to California in 1966, when she was twenty. Her beauty was remarkable, skin tanned dark gold from the Mediterranean sun, hair long and lustrous. She complained about the several extra pounds attributable to the pasta of Italy and the sauces of France, but she was, in truth, voluptuous. She now spoke fluent Italian, good French and Spanish, passable Greek. “I’m one of those people who can pick up languages quickly,” said Annabella. “When I go back, they’ll help me get work.”

  Jane was stunned. Go back? “But this is your home.”

  Annabella nodded gently. She embraced her mother. “Maybe I can explain it this way,” she said. “Right now, this minute, I am in and of this country. But I am not a part of it.”

  But home is seductive, as is a country whose telephones work, whose toilets flush, whose appetites can be sated by boulevards of hamburgers and California supermarkets with produce so tempting it could be put in the Museum of Modern Art. Annabella’s intention to stay only long enough to earn money for a return to foreign shores fell victim to la vita americana. Oh, she never woke up on any particular morning and announced that she had changed her mind, but with each passing week, then month, then year, the mother felt her heart beating more contentedly.

  Resuming her education, Annabella became interested first in art, then medicine. Her rationale was that she could learn a hospital discipline that would be valuable for employment in Europe. Her junior college grades were good enough for admission to Stanford, where she studied X-ray technology. The classroom was stimulating, but when she was deemed sophisticated enough to transfer knowledge to actual hospital endeavor, a sore disenchantment took over. Among those who worked in the X-ray section of a hospital near San Francisco, Annabella found little or no great calling. It was a job, nothing else, like a petty office rife with feuds, jealousies, and goldbricking. At the end of a shift, technicians often ducked into the toilet to avoid a mangled patient being wheeled down the hallway, for fear it would add an unpaid-for half hour to the schedule. One morning Annabella discovered a minor leak in an X-ray machine that had the possibility of growing dangerous—to patients and staff. When her superior refused to act, Annabella went to the department head; he thanked her and did nothing. “I’ve discovered I don’t really like doctors,” Annabella told a girl friend the day she quit in despair. “Doctors have this attitude that says, ‘I am a god, and if I make a mistake that is okay.’ But this is wrong. Gods make mistakes.”

  When she had first returned from the long odyssey abroad, Annabella encountered a social gap. She had difficulty adjusting to the new crop of young men in her town. The year she had left home, 1963, the boys were barbered and tailored and the thoughts in their head were traditionally American—combining sex, apathy, and ambition. Now, with a president assassinated in Dallas and the streets filling with hirsute youth in patched jeans crying defiance of an immoral war, questioning the foundations of their nation, Annabella felt alien. She dated infrequently. Conversation was difficult. Two years away and she knew not what to say. Then she ran into a boy from her high school.

  Jimmy was his name, and how he had changed. Annabella vaguely remembered him as a kid interested in agriculture and sports. Now he was a shaggy young man with a blond mustache that drooped like sagging parentheses. He played melancholy songs on a guitar that was permanently strapped about his shoulders. As yet there was no purpose in his life that Annabella could discern, but in his manner was an encompassing gentleness, a sweetness that had only recently come to American men. Jimmy had a job of sorts, in landscaping, but it was only a means of minimal support. His needs were modest. He required enough money to buy guitar strings and a lid of Colombian when it was around, and half-gallon jugs of wine to take on long hikes into the wilderness where he told Annabella the name of every tree and flower.

  “I’ve fallen in love,” Annabella told her mother after dating Jimmy several months. “I didn’t want it to happen, and I didn’t think it would happen. But it has—and we want to get married.” Jane was frankly surprised at her daughter’s choice. She had not expected a young woman as worldly as Annabella to discover love with a man who had no more ambition than a sunflower. Jane expressed these thoughts to Dick, but she never told Annabella. “My daughter is also my friend,” said Jane, “and I must accept her decision.”

  The wedding was lovely, though difficult to reach for those not comfortable in the outdoor life. The couple chose a stone quarry for their altar, in the lime and tan hills near San Jose. They recited their own marriage vows, simple, dedicated to love and mutual respect. The word “obey” was, of course, deleted. The bride wore an antique wedding gown of cream lace with a Spanish mantilla that rose in a tower behind her dark hair. Jimmy had on a tan leather suit and an open shirt, because, try as he could, he was unable to affix a tie around his neck. The groom played a serenade on his guitar for Annabella, and there was dancing amid fountains of red wine and platters of fruit and cheese. “I love this woman!” Jimmy cried triumphantly. Annabella told Jane later that she had such a good time at the wedding that she wanted to do it all over again. She wished that Carlo had been there to lead the dancing.

  The newlyweds set up housekeeping in a log cabin on a thirty-acre tract of heavily wooded land on a mountainside near their town. From their windows could be viewed pine trees as sentinels, and the light that filtered through the branches was golden. The cabin became a home for animals—dogs, cats, an occasional coyote, goats, whatever creature that wandered by and elected to stay for a while. Annabella and Jimmy often awoke to find their quilt crowded with small critters, others sprawled on the hooked rug that the lady of the house had made to spread on the wide, rough plank floor.

  For a time, Annabella busied herself playing house, immersed in domesticity. She saw herself as a pioneer wife, sewing curtains, making pottery, growing vegetables, raising chickens, milking goats. Periodically, Jimmy worked as a gardener, but he preferred to stay at home restoring antiques and watching Annabella efficiently run the house. When Jane visited several months into the marriage, she felt that Annabella was becoming more mother than wife, Jimmy more child than husband. But, she reasoned, relationships have worked on a script stranger than that. One thing that did bother her was Jimmy’s increasing use of alcohol. He had moved from wine to stronger spirits, and Jane saw that her daughter bit her lip when Jimmy reeled toward the kitchen for a new drink, or somet
imes passed out in his chair beside the fireplace.

  At this point, destiny sent another player onto the stage, who at first proved a welcome diversion for Annabella. He was an Indian youth, from Bombay, newly come to town as an exchange student. Annabella’s father, Dick, encountered the boy, whose name was Sanjoy, at work, liked him, discovered he lacked a place to live while he was employed over the summer, invited him home for dinner. Annabella was always pleased to meet someone from a foreign country; she liked Sanjoy immediately. He was a handsome youth approaching twenty, smart, something of a hustler, and consumed with ambition, a quality far more easy to tend in America than in India. Already he was dressing in jeans, trying to fit in words like “cool” and “right on” into his sentences. But they seemed as awkward as a temple dancer attempting rock and roll.

  With their large home quiet and empty after the departure of Annabella to marriage and the log cabin, the Tremonts asked Sanjoy if he wanted to move in for the summer. The invitation was happily accepted, and quickly an intimate and rewarding friendship developed between the visitor and Annabella, their bond being his foreignness. The lawyer’s son from Bombay represented a link to the world out there, the one which Annabella sorely missed at the cabin in the woods. She was lonely. Friends had not only been few, but comfortable chiefly in conversation that encompassed music and pop psychology. The relationship between Annabella and Sanjoy was never sexual, not even a hint thereof. From the beginning, neither had the slightest interest in the other romantically, developing instead into a “brother-sister” feeling, stronger, perhaps, than lovers.

  Annabella took charge. She suggested that Sanjoy wash all the grease out of his hair and introduced him to a blow dryer. She took him to flea markets where secondhand jeans could be bought for two dollars. They ate hamburgers and gossiped and stopped for tea. An eager listener, Annabella wanted to know everything about India, encouraging her friend to speak of harems and holy men and the caste system that will segregate India despite a hundred laws to ban it. With six hundred million people, Sanjoy told her, there must be social regimentation. Identities are hard enough to come by in any culture.

  When Sanjoy went back to college in the fall, one hundred miles down the coast near San Luis Obispo, Annabella suffered depression. It showed in her face. Jimmy saw it, too, using the innocent affection as ammunition in quarrels, suggesting that his wife was more emotionally committed to Sanjoy than she let on. At this, Annabella flared and shot back angry denials. But as Jimmy’s accusations continued, she chose a course of silence, even when her husband drifted into the cabin past midnight and either threw up on the bathroom floor or spun into the bedroom ripe for a fight. Annabella told a girl friend that a caste system was now operative between her and Jimmy. Annabella preferred classical music but deferred to Jimmy’s enchantment with acid rock. She liked to speak of art; he fell conversationally asleep if a name like Raphael arose at his dinner table. She went back to Stanford, taking a few courses in literature and psychology. Jimmy thought it not only time-consuming—the drive was an hour either way—but wasteful of the money it took to buy gasoline for their Volkswagen. And if Annabella really spoiled for a fight, all she had to mention was her passion for travel, of returning to Forte dei Marmi, or perhaps even India, where Sanjoy regularly invited her. “This is our home,” answered Jimmy to all suggestions that the two might venture out of their nest. “We aren’t going anywhere.”

  That’s true, thought Annabella. Unchallengeably true.

  There came the night when Annabella invited Sanjoy to bring a date to the cabin for dinner. She wanted it to be special. From a book in the library she copied down the recipe for tandoori chicken, spending three days marinating the fowl in honey, yoghurt, and spices, then popping it into an extremely hot oven to seal the juices. Vegetables were steamed in the scents of cumin and curry powder, and pita bread was as close as she could come to the nan that Sanjoy enjoyed in Bombay. With disinterest, Jimmy watched the preparations, and on the night of the feast appeared roaring drunk. He had wrecked the VW a week before, and on this important night chose to describe the accident in clinical detail. His wife and guests listened with polite boredom. Jimmy spilled his wine, put his food in his mouth and it fell out when he talked. The chicken was under-cooked, he said, the vegetables smelled suspicious. Finally Annabella ran to the kitchen to hide her tears. Sanjoy tried to make peace by saying that Indian food took some getting used to, that Annabella’s was the most authentic he had eaten since leaving Bombay.

  Presently Jimmy fell asleep on a pile of pillows, his dogs snuggling at his body. The evening crept to an awkward close. When he said goodbye, Sanjoy hugged Annabella and whispered his continuing invitation to join him on a trip to India, with or without her husband. The next day Annabella called a girl friend and swore her to secrecy and said she might soon accept the offer. She had played the dutiful wife in the woods for a very long run; putting some space and distance into a rotting marriage did not seem inappropriate.

  Clandestinely they planned their trip. Both had to tread carefully, for if Jimmy even suspected, there would surely be a wrenching drama. “I love Jimmy very much,” Annabella told her friend Sally, “but I don’t know if I can play mother to him the rest of his life. He’s a little boy. A dear little boy at times. But he hasn’t grown up and doesn’t show signs of ever doing it.” Sally, a practical sort who had a master’s degree in English literature but who now made wall hangings, suggested marriage counseling. That had been tried already, said Annabella. Jimmy had broken two appointments, and when he finally showed for the third, he was tight and giggled the whole hour.

  One autumn night in 1973, Annabella sat with her parents in their home, talking quietly in front of a roaring fire. It was crisp and in the nearby mountains snow was expected. Annabella tried to be cheerful, but she was not successful; Jane saw through her daughter’s charade like a person trying to smile away a migraine. Then the telephone rang intrusively and Dick went to answer it.

  His face was pale and tight when he returned. He stammered, and both women sensed that something was terribly wrong. “I don’t know how to tell you this except to say it quickly,” he began. Earlier on this night, Sanjoy and three college friends had been at a party in San Luis Obispo. Much wine had been drunk. One of the youths was a pilot and owned a private plane. He suggested a joyride to show Sanjoy the splendors of California’s coastline by night.

  “And?” urged Annabella, trying to hurry her father.

  And the four boys got into the plane and prepared to take off. The night was wretched. From the sea, fog was rolling in to endanger visibility. The plane lifted off the ground, but it stayed aloft only moments before falling back onto the runway. An explosion! Fire rushed over the little craft and devoured it. The boys were trapped in a crematorium.

  Sanjoy? Annabella’s hand flew to her mouth.

  With enormous sadness, Dick shook his head and turned away. Sanjoy died instantly. The fire incinerated all of them. It took hours to find enough flesh for identification. Annabella moaned like one of the old women in Italy, collapsing and surrendering to grief. She wept like she had not done since the morning long ago in the stone cottage where Carlo had died with his arm outstretched to her.

  The tragedy forged temporary peace in the marriage. For several months the young couple lived quietly in their cabin. Regularly Jimmy swore off drinking, and though it rarely lasted more than a few days, alcohol did not seem to dominate his life. Sober, he was a brilliant artisan and a devoted lover. Annabella marveled at her husband’s talent in restoring furniture. He possessed the same dedication for work that she had observed among certain craftsmen of Italy and Greece. If the truce held between them, Annabella speculated about opening an antique store to sell Jimmy’s lovingly refinished pieces.

  “Are you happy?” asked her friend Sally one day in a visit to the cabin.

  “I suppose so,” answered Annabella. “If you define happiness as the lack of unhappiness.”

/>   But wars, be they between nations or men and women, break out over an accumulation of grievances stored up over the years. Thus it was with Annabella and Jimmy, who found themselves in full fury again within months. Jimmy’s position was that his wife was a snob, a pretentious one at that, with a roving eye and intolerance for the quiet and basic life. Roaring back, Annabella charged that her husband was a child, an alcoholic child who was destructive and vengeful. Three wrecked automobiles rusted this minute in junkyards as testimony to his dangerous nature.

  Jimmy wouldn’t buy it. His wife drove him to drink; she so tormented his head that he had bad luck on the highway; his wife cast spells on him—consciously or otherwise. Alcoholics always have excuses, countered Annabella. They fought. They flung furniture at one another. They screamed until their throats were raw. They cried and hugged and promised and broke apart to curse anew.

  In the end, on a fevered midnight when all of the animals barked and jumped about nervously in the combat zone, the couple agreed to separate. But it was Jimmy who moved out, taking refuge in his own mother’s house. “That’s beautiful!” shouted Annabella with sarcasm. “You go home to Mama.” Staying behind in the cabin, Annabella nursed her anger. She nailed the windows shut and put new locks on the doors so that Jimmy could not gain admittance. Often she lay in her bed in the chilled darkness and heard him pounding at the cabin, the dogs yelping joyously at his unsuccessful homecoming.