Points of Departure: Stories Read online

  Liz reached the small silk-screening company in San Jose well before lunchtime. She had held her first design job here, drawing logos and designs for T-shirts.

  She sat at Mr. Jacobs’s desk in one corner of the workroom while the elderly man finished packing an order of T-shirts. Mr. Jacobs’s pipe lay unattended in an ashtray on one corner of the desk, giving off a scent that touched old memories. Mr. Jacobs stood with his back to her, folding shirts and layering them neatly. She had offered to help, but he had turned her down, saying it was quicker to do it himself. She watched him work—a wiry old man dressed in jeans and a blue workshirt. He had always worn jeans and a blue workshirt. Liz suspected that if she returned in five years he would still wear jeans and a blue workshirt, still have just the same bald spot in his thinning gray hair. Liz tilted her chair back, resting her feet on the oak desk top, and relaxed.

  As Mr. Jacobs worked, he complained about his unreliable help—high school students who worked long enough to buy new wheels for their cars, then quit. When the car needed a new paint job, they asked to be rehired.

  “I’ll bet you still hire them back, don’t you?” Liz accused, grinning at the old man.

  “He sure does.” A woman stepped from Liz’s old office and answered her question. “You’re supposed to be going out to lunch with your friend,” the woman continued. “I said I’d pack those.”

  “See what kind of help I have, Liz,” Mr. Jacobs said.

  “Libby is always ordering me around, just like you used to.”

  Liz put her feet back on the floor and let her chair return to an upright position. Libby wore blue jeans and had long straight hair. When she smiled at Liz, her smile was crooked—a slightly cynical line.

  Mr. Jacobs scowled at the younger woman unconvincingly.

  “Watch yourself there. You can be replaced you know.”

  They went to the dinette a few blocks from the silkscreen company for lunch. Liz was uneasy and distracted.

  Feeling awkward, but unable to avoid the question, Liz asked about Libby. “She looks like an interesting person. Is she a good designer?”

  Mr. Jacobs nodded. “She sure is. She’s a good kid—I’m fond of her. She reminds me a lot of you when you first started working for me.”

  Liz caught a glimpse of her own face in the mirror behind the counter. Her brown hair hung straight to her shoulders and her mouth had a cynical twist. She looked away.

  “She’ll be moving on, soon enough, just the way you did,” Mr. Jacobs was saying. “She has to grow up …” Liz tried to listen but she was distracted by her own reflection.

  The dinette seemed too crowded and noisy and Mr. Jacobs’s joking words to Libby beat in Liz’s head: “You can be replaced, you know. You can be replaced.”

  “How’s that young man of yours?” Mr. Jacobs asked.

  The question cut through the noise of her thoughts and the noise of the dinette.

  “You mean Mark,” she said. She had not realized how long it had been since she had talked to Mr. Jacobs. “I haven’t seen him for a while. We broke up over a year ago.” She fidgeted with the silverware on the Formica countertop and when she looked up Mr. Jacobs was watching her with concern. “It’s all right,” she said, and her voice seemed too loud, as if she were protesting too much and too soon. “We were just going in different directions, that’s all. If we had both been older and ready to settle down, it might have been different.” The sudden silence in her mind reflected the words as an echo: it might have been different.

  From Mr. Jacobs’s office, Liz called Terry, an old friend who lived in San Francisco. She tried to keep her voice light, fighting the panic that rose in her. “Terry, can I come to visit tonight?”

  “Sure, I’d be glad to see you before you head east.”

  Terry’s voice was calm. She had always served as a balance for Liz, a relaxed and soothing presence. “But I thought you were going to drive east from Santa Cruz.”

  “Plans have changed.” Liz could hear the tension in her own voice.

  “You’re not chickening out on this job in New York, are you?” Terry asked. “You better not be.”

  In the workroom behind her, Liz could hear the rumble of Mr. Jacobs’s voice, then the sound of Libby’s laughter.

  She wanted to run away. “Please, Terry, can we talk when I get there. Please …” When Liz hung up, she slipped out the front door without saying good-bye.

  At Terry’s apartment, Liz tried to relax. She sat on the couch, staring at the cup of tea that her friend had given her, trying to think of a way to explain why she had been upset by meeting two women with brown hair holding jobs that she once held.

  “You aren’t planning on visiting Mark before you go, are you?” Terry asked. Her friend sat in an easy chair across the room, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes intent on Liz’s face. Liz knew that Terry was worried about her but she could not help imagining another woman sitting on the couch, telling Terry about her problems while Terry listened intently.

  “I’d thought of it.” Liz admitted. She had imagined a reconciliation; she had imagined a mature, but tender, final farewell; she had imagined a confrontation with a dim figure—a woman with brown hair and a twisted smile.

  “That wouldn’t be a good idea,” Terry said. “You know that.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just …” Liz hesitated. The dim image of the woman who followed her had grown clearer in her mind. Liz saw the woman’s face—a younger version of her own. She imagined herself patting the woman on the back and saying: “Good luck. You’ve got a great past ahead of you, kid.” She shook her head. “No,” she said—half to herself, half to Terry. “I guess it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  In honor of Liz’s visit, Terry took the next day off. At Liz’s suggestion, they went to lunch at the cafe that had been her favorite when she had worked in the city. Just as they were leaving the restaurant, they met Dave, the editor of the magazine where Liz had been layout artist.

  “Liz! I didn’t even know you were in town.” Dave clapped her on the shoulder. “You have to come to my party tonight. Everyone will be there.” He hesitated, frowning. “Ah … you and Mark are still friends, aren’t you?”

  “Of course,” she replied, a little too quickly. “It would be good to see him again.” She managed an unconcerned smile. “What time should we show up?”

  When they left the cafe, Terry put her hand on Liz’s arm. “You aren’t fooling me, you know. If you don’t want to see Mark …”

  “It’s okay,” Liz insisted. “I do want to go to the party. And I’d like to see Mark again.”

  “I hope you want to see him out of spite—that’s a good healthy motive. I hope you want to show him how well you’re doing without him.” Terry was watching Liz’s face.

  “I just hope you don’t want to see him for old time’s sake. You can’t go back, you know.”

  “I know,” Liz said. “I really do know.”

  She realized at the door of Dave’s house in the hills above Oakland that she really had not known—until she saw the lady on Mark’s arm. The lady’s long brown hair was tied up on her head so that wisps of curls floated down around her face. Though she looked a few years younger than Liz, her mouth had a cynical twist. And seeing Mark woke Liz’s old doubts: could they have worked it out? Should they have stayed together?

  Dave took their jackets and followed Liz’s gaze to the couple. “That’s Lillian,” he said. “She has your old job.”

  “Oh, really?” Liz maintained her calm facade, but when Dave turned away, she spoke to Terry under her breath.

  “That’s not all she has.”

  “If you want to leave,” Terry began.

  Liz shook her head quickly. “It’s okay.” She knew by the way that Terry touched her arm that her friend realized that it was not really okay, but would not blow her cover.

  Liz smiled and started across the room toward the couple, stopping on her way to greet old friends from the magazine, to tel
l people that, yes, she had moved to bigger and better things; yes, the rumors that she was moving to New York were true; no, she had not forgotten them, not at all.

  Even as she laughed and chatted, she kept an eye on Mark and Lillian—and noticed when the lady left Mark to join another group of people.

  “Well hello, Mark,” Liz said at last. “How’s life treating you?” She hugged him in greeting—they had parted as friends, after all. “You’re looking good.”

  “Sounds like things are going well for you,” he said. “From all the rumors that I’ve heard the job in New York will be a step up.”

  “It should be a challenge,” she agreed. Across the room, she could see Lillian talking to Dave. “She looks like a really nice lady,” Liz said. Lillian smiled at a remark, and Liz noticed again that her smile had a skewed look.

  “She is.” His voice had a guarded tone, and when Liz glanced at him she saw that he was watching Lillian too.

  “You don’t remember her, do you?” She looked at him questioningly. “She was one class behind you in art school. Apparently she took a painting class with you.”

  Liz studied the woman’s face, but could not remember having seen her before. “No, I don’t remember her.”

  “She remembers you. Apparently she admired your work.” He grinned wryly. “One of your many admirers.”

  Liz looked away from Lillian, meeting Mark’s gaze. “I’ll be in town tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t leave for a few days. I thought we might get together for lunch. Just to talk.” She knew by Mark’s expression that the question had been a mistake.”

  “I’d rather not,” he said. “Lillian and I … I think she feels threatened, seeing you here. You fit back in a little too well.”

  “I don’t want to get back together or anything. I’m no threat. I just thought … we’re still friends and …” She stopped, feeling she was making a fool of herself. “We spent a lot of time together and I still care what you’re doing …”

  “You still haven’t learned to let go of the past, have you?” His voice held a slight edge. “You still hang on to it.”

  “And you don’t?” She realized as soon as she spoke that she could not explain what she meant. She could not explain that Lillian’s twisted smile was just like Libby’s, like Elsa’s, like her own.

  “I have let go,” he said, and she did not know how to refute it.

  When Terry hailed her from across the room, Liz turned away with relief to join her friend by the fireplace. Later in the evening, she started to step out on the wooden deck that overlooked the ravine behind Dave’s house, and stopped with her hand on the glass door.

  Mark and Lillian stood on the deck, silhouetted by moonlight. Mark’s hand rested on Lillian’s shoulders and as Liz watched, he lifted one hand to touch her cheek. In her mind, Liz could hear him saying: You’re really very special to me, you know that?

  Liz felt as if she were watching a replay of her own courtship. In the darkness beyond the figures, she imagined a long line of faces, each one framed by brown hair, each wearing a twisted smile. Behind her, she could hear music from the party; on an old album, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young sang: “And it seems like I’ve been here before …”

  She ran away, knowing that she was running away. She persuaded Terry to leave the party. She insisted on leaving for New York the next day. Terry did not question Liz’s sudden panic and Liz knew that her friend interpreted her need to be gone as stemming from a fear that she might be trapped into staying. Liz did not tell her otherwise.

  As Liz drove cross-country, speeding along midwestern highways where every town looked the same, she admitted her cowardice to herself. But she kept her foot pressed to the gas pedal, staring at the road until her eyes ached and gripping the wheel to keep her hands from shaking. At a McDonald’s, she ate a hamburger and gulped coffee that scorched her throat on the way down and burned in her stomach afterward. She spent one night in a roadside motel, sleeping fitfully and waking with the sensation that she was still moving, clutching the wheel and pushing down on the gas pedal. She was leaving them all behind.

  A knot of resentment remained with her: Why did they follow her? Why was she chosen to be the leader, the Pied Piper with a pack of children dancing in her shadow?

  She reached New York and began work, spending the first day setting up her office so that it suited her. The secretary for the art department said that Beth, the artist who had quit, would stop by and pick up the sketches that she had left behind.

  Liz settled down to work at her new desk, trying to ignore the constant anger that knotted her stomach. When the door to her office opened, she looked up. The older woman who stepped inside wore her brown hair pinned back. Her mouth was twisted in an ironical grin.

  “Hello,” she said. “I’m Beth.”

  Orange Blossom Time

  THE TEAMSTERS WERE striking again. The grocery stores were out of fruit and vegetables and were running out of canned goods. The smog hung low and mean in the east.

  A woman Michael did not know carried a bushel of oranges up his front steps. When he opened the door to his one-room apartment—opened it just a crack because there had been two knifings down the street that week she grinned at him through the narrow opening. “I brought you some oranges,” she said. “I’ll see you later.” She swung the bushel basket off her hip and set it on the top step.

  He opened the door wider as she turned away. She wore her golden hair piled on her head in an old-fashioned sort of bun. She was a small woman with a tan like no one who lived in the city should have. When she lifted a hand to smooth back her hair he noticed—with the part of his mind that noted unimportant details—a bruise on her tanned wrist.

  Michael recognized her when she was halfway down the stairs to the court. He did not know her name. She lived in one of the tiny street-level apartments that had windows covered with metal grillwork to ward off burglars.

  Michael had lived in the apartment complex for over a year. During that time, a biker, a family of Mexicans, and a hooker had lived in that tiny apartment. A shade-loving plant that the hooker had tried to grow in the window had died from lack of light. Yet this woman had a tan like a girl on a farm.

  “Hey,” said Michael. “I don’t understand. Why …”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “They would have gone to waste anyway.”

  Michael hesitated, feeling foolish. As if he had walked in during the second act of a play and was trying to piece together the plot. “I don’t even know your name. I’m Michael.”

  “My name’s Karen,” she said. Michael realized as she regarded him with bright blue eyes that she did not fit.

  She did not fit the apartment complex; she did not fit the city. She looked like the sort of woman who would bring someone a basket of oranges. And that brought him back to the question that he had put aside earlier: Where had she gotten the oranges anyway? “I’ll see you later,” she said with certainty. And she walked away.

  Michael was on his way back to the apartment from his part-time job at the bookstore. He was an hour later than usual—though the city’s buses had continued to run on the city’s emergency supply of gasoline, they had grown increasingly unreliable in the last six months.

  He turned the corner into the apartment court and almost bumped into Karen. The man who lived in the apartment below Michael stood beside her, holding her wrist tightly with a dirty hand. He held a bottle in his free hand and he was saying, “Come on: We can have a drink together. I need company. I’m sick.”

  When Michael stopped beside them, the man bared his teeth in a sort of territorial grin. Michael could not read the expression on Karen’s face. Distaste? Pity?

  “Karen. I was hoping I’d run into you,” Michael interrupted the man. A flicker of surprise crossed the woman’s face. Michael continued, “You want to come up to my apartment and have a cup of tea?”

  “Hey!” The man swung the bottle at Michael’s head with a grunt of effort
.

  Michael had lived in the city since he was young. Street fighting had been a required subject at his high school, though not an officially recognized one. Not a natural fighter, in order to survive, Michael had learned to act rapidly—anticipating his enemy’s moves, analyzing, and countering them.

  The man was swaying, already off-balance. Michael caught the arm swinging the bottle, yanked the man forward, and struck a single, hard punch to the solar plexus. The man’s grip on Karen’s wrist broke and she stumbled back, rubbing her arm. The man fell forward, tripping over his own feet and twisting to one side. The bottle shattered against the asphalt and glass scattered around them. The sweet scent of cheap whiskey rose.

  When Michael laid a protective hand on Karen’s arm, the man scowled and started to get up, but collapsed back when he began to cough. The ragged sound began deep in his chest and seemed to tear his throat as it passed. He lay on the pavement amid bits of glass, immobilized by spasms of coughing.

  Michael led Karen away, not looking back. “You’re all right, aren’t you?” he asked her.

  “I’m fine.” She hesitated, still looking a little surprised, a little puzzled. “Thanks for stopping to help. I don’t expect people to do that in a neighborhood like this.”

  Michael hesitated, once again feeling foolish. She acted like they had never met. “I wanted to thank you again for the oranges. I was kind of out of it yesterday and—”

  “Oranges?” she interrupted.

  “The ones you brought me. Where did you get them anyway? All the stores I’ve been to in the last week have been out of everything but canned stuff.”