California Dreamin’

Snow drifts from a sky simultaneously grey and bright. Too cold to cling to any surface approaching the vertical, it slithers down the steep slope of the barn’s tin roof; in the woodlot, all silence and frost-blackened trunks, it slides in uneven sheets off bare branches, breaking into disorganized swirls and flurries before finally settling into the crevices of the forest floor: sharp quartz and broken granite, spent pinecones and dried leaves curled into brown claws.

The man pauses just inside the kitchen’s door to pull on his gloves and adjust his Western-style hat further down over his close-cropped hair. He pulls open the door and steps quickly out onto the back porch. He’s always liked the dry shock of that first outdoor breath, and he breathes in the sweetly dulled scent of his farm in winter, of the hay in its loft, the corn in the silo, the earthy aroma of the slow brook as it sends up a wall of pearly mist along its length. He flips up the fur collar of his faded blue rough-out coat and starts down the stairs. His boots echo on the steps and, in the barn, impatient hooves shuffle as the horses hear him coming, and the cows set up a mournful lowing.

His mind, however, is elsewhere.

• • •

With the windows down, he can smell the heated perfume of sub-tropical flowers. It’s true that the drive from the airport to his hotel is quicker if he takes the big freeway, but then he’d miss the masses of red and pink and white oleander that divide the small highway as it meanders along the valleys of the coast’s backdrop of soft brown foothills, “brown” because this is winter, but not “winter” because you have to put chains on your tires, or because your fingers are too numb to feel, or because your tractor is the only engine on the place that will start and that only once you’ve knocked the ice out of the ignition keyhole.

This is his fourth trip to the West Coast office in as many months, and he wonders how many times he’ll be able to come up with new reasons before his boss catches on. ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter anyway—the project does need my help…’ This trip, however, is as close to a boondoggle as any so far: the scheduling meeting could easily have been handled with a conference call, but he’d convinced his boss to “come out and meet the customer” on the speculative idea that another project was in the works and they’d have a better chance at grabbing it if they schmoozed it up a bit.

He was also eager to see the new location. With the latest budget approval, the tiny office had moved into larger digs and hired a couple of analysts and some more support staff. He knew one of the analysts from a previous project, and he liked the feeling of an office in flower: new people, electric atmosphere, excitement all around…

• • •

Activity helps keep his heart out of his throat. It’s long, hard work tending to the animals in winter—bales of hay to be hauled down and broken up, stalls to be mucked out, hooves to be checked—and the morning is almost gone before he knows it. He’s worked up a good sweat; his coat and hat were discarded almost immediately onto a hook outside the alcove that serves as the farm’s “office”. His sleeves are rolled up and his muscular forearms glisten between the leather cuffs at his wrists and the bunched wool plaid above his elbows. His stomach growls and he glances at his watch: ‘If I go in now, I can catch the noon news while I eat.’

Anything to avoid the silence.

• • •

The business park is laid out so oddly that it takes him a couple of tries to find the right parking lot for the new office. As he switches off the engine and rolls up the windows, his heartbeat quickens with anticipation—he delights in meeting new people, drawing them out: “Everybody has a story, if you’ll just listen.” It is his secretly favorite hobby, perhaps his real purpose in life, to be a receiver of secrets, a safe repository for the parts of peoples’ lives too explosive or too intimate to trust with their families, their friends, their lovers. A hearer of the unspeakable.

Whistling, he punches the “up” button and waits only slightly impatiently. It’s mid-morning, and the building’s hallways are deserted, people having finally settled down from the flurry of arrival and greeting and donuts and coffee—even from outside the closed doors of reception rooms he can feel them hunkered over their desks, torturing budgets and arranging meeting schedules and churning out incomprehensible technical specifications for customers who won’t read them anyway.

He rides up, alone, to the third floor. They’ve taken the entire floor, which sounds like a lot, but the building is pretty small overall, so the elevator doors open directly onto what should have been the reception area. Except there’s just a desk with a technical typist sitting at it pounding furiously at a keyboard, and a small typing table and another typist crammed behind that, then a bank of filing cabinets beyond which are engineers’ desks backed up against each other and conference tables sifted over with drawings and computer printouts and stacks of three-ring binders. Against the left wall is the copy machine, which seems to be in constant rattle-y use. Next to that is a folding work table on which sits a dilapidated coffee machine and a motley set of mugs stacked higgledy-piggledy and in dire need of washing. Even the boss’ “office” can be discerned only because he has his own bank of filing cabinets screening his desk from direct view. It’s not exactly chaos, but it’s close.

Despite the low-level din, at the ding of the elevator doors, curious heads pop up from behind monitors and stacks of books. “Hey! Walt’s here!” His grin sweeps the room. This is a good crew and he enjoys them, both as colleagues and as people. There’s an all-day planning meeting, and the customer is already here, so he makes a beeline for the big conference table against the back wall, making small talk on the way: good flight, love this weather, nice to meet you.

He doesn’t miss, however, the new girl at the small typing table, petite, concentrating on her work, or her expression when she glanced up. That will just have to wait until a break.

• • •

The silence in the house is oppressive. He’d worked hard to create that silence.

When he bought the place, he knew that the area abounded in colonial era structures, but he knew he’d never be able to afford to get his hands on something like that. He settled for an older farm, and contented himself with its clear brook, its lovely woodlot, and its sloping, semi-circular shape which gave it southern exposure longer than any place around—the corn and the vegetable patch would grow well in the extra sun, and the gentleness of the slope ensured he’d never have to fight either bogginess or a corrosive run-off.

He got the farm into good working shape before tackling the rundown house, plowing fields, building board fence from scratch, clearing underbrush from the woodlot. This had meant about five years of living in rough conditions, but he’d been happy. His wife, not so much, but she seemed to be on board with his project.

When it came time to tear into the house itself, he threw himself into it wholeheartedly. His best friend Lynn—little, scrawny, and sharp-faced but with a slow grin and the patience to stand aside while you learned your own lessons—was a wizard with a level and a saw, and had an artistic eye trained by a lifetime spent surrounded by colonial architecture. He bought a smaller house closer in to town, and the girls and his mother moved in there. The house might be ordinary and modern (by his standards, anyway), but he was by god going to see that it was beautiful, with a wrap-around porch, and Federal blue walls, and an authentic tin roof so the rain would sound right dancing off it in summer storms.

He could still remember the moment when, after weeks of ripping up brittle and curling linoleum, and prying off yellowed and crumbling drywall, that last layer had fallen away under his hands. He’d actually staggered back a step, standing dazed, speechless at the sight: large adzed logs, notched at the corners, chinking still in place.

“Hey, I’m about ready for a beer, whaddya say?” Lynn ambled in from the porch—the substructure was nearly done now—and stopped dead in his tracks. Had Walt been watching, he would have seen what few had ever seen: a Lynn surprised enough by something to gape.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he finally drawled.

Walt turned to look at him, feeling a little giddy. “Am I dreaming?”

Lynn pulled a loose cigarette out of his shirt pocket, got it going, and blew out the first drag in a long white cloud. “Looks like you got yourself a bona-fidey log cabin here, buddy.”

The discovery had transformed their activity from a refurbishing into a restoration. Each day seemed more like worship than work. They worked steadily and, often, in silence for a good part of the day—the house seemed to tell them what it needed, rather than the other way around. The weeks passed quickly, and its beauty solidified around them. The single room that was the log cabin shone with a warm glow, and the additions that made up the rest of the house were re designed to cradle the treasure at the center. They ordered the tightest windows they could find; they re-laid the upper floors so a hundred years from now they wouldn’t creak; they found an original balustrade to grace the central staircase. Lynn created the porch as a frame for the entire work of art, with boards running diagonally, mitered at the corners, and the porch roof cantilevered far out over the steps.

The house was so tight that when you shut the front door with all the windows closed it made your ears pop. It took up his head and his heart for almost a year, and he loved it like a child.

‘Maybe that’s what finally did it to her.’

One day about eight months into the work, when the house was starting to come together but was still unlivable and he and Lynn slept in sleeping bags in the log cabin room and ate off the floor, a day when he was preparing the kitchen counter for tiling, Sheila had tromped in from the brisk autumn afternoon and sat down at the kitchen table, the antique kitchen table that he scoured the countryside for, the one with turned legs and a solid maple top and nicks to show how it had lived its life. She plopped her chin in her hands and blew out long breath. She waited.

“Walt.”

He turned around, startled. He’d not heard her come in, too wrapped up in leveling the long front edge of the counter.

“Oh, hi.” He turned back quickly, both hands taken up with holding the level and the shim, and his head taken up with measuring the flatness.

“Walt, we need to talk.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“This is important, Walt.”

“I’m listening, go ahead. I just have to get this straight here…”

“No, listen to me! Stop all …” she waved her hand at him, at the kitchen counter, “… that. Put down that damned level and come over here and sit down and look at me.”

“What? What’s wrong now?” But he did lay down his tools, and came and sat and turned his face toward hers. He was exasperated at being interrupted, but if this didn’t take too long it would be okay.

She snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Walt! Pay attention to me!” He blinked and looked up, meeting her eyes this time. “That’s better. I swear sometimes…” She shook her head and snorted shortly.

“Anyway… I imagine what I’m going to say will be no surprise to you, but it’s important that I say it.”

He tried not to look as confused as he felt. ‘What’s she talking about now?’

“You know I’m finishing my nursing degree at the end of the winter semester.”

“Yeah. That’ll be a relief, won’t it? There’s still a lot to do here before we can move the kids back in and…”

“No, Walt. Stop! Would you just listen a minute?” She drew in a breath and released it slowly, spreading her fingers on the table in front of her. “I’m finished, Walt. With the house. With the farm. With trying to be whatever you wanted me to be. With hoping to live up to whatever image it is that you have for me, which, I have to tell you, I’ve never understood.” She was getting really worked up now, he could tell. Her face was flushed and while she wasn’t shouting, she was on a roll that he knew better than to interrupt.

“I’m just done! With all of it! I’m tired of never knowing what’s going to happen next, and I’m tired of always starting new things so we never seem to get settled into just one life, and I’m tired of feeling inadequate and dumb and …”

She choked on the words and buried her face in her hands, hot, angry tears trickling down her forearms and making little wet spots where her elbows rested on the table’s smooth warm surface. Her shoulders shook convulsively, her breath coming in gasping sobs.

Walt felt himself go stony inside. She was right: this, in fact, was not unexpected. For a long time he had put out of his mind how rocky their marriage had become, how long that rockiness had been coming. Somehow, he had tried to believe, it would be better once the house was in shape and they could move back in and wouldn’t they all see what a lovely life this could be? Masters of their days, their own land giving itself up to make their living for them, this beautiful house with its store of history on this sweet farmland barely an hour’s drive from the capitol of the most powerful nation on earth? Surely then…

But, no. He’d been a fool to blind himself about this. He was—always had been—alone in his love for this place, this house, this farm. In his desire for a life that reached into the past, into a slower pace, into an ancient pact with the earth. Every single day since he’d moved them here had been a struggle with the kids and their chores, if he allowed himself to remember. No one but he had appreciated the quiet early mornings milking cows and feeding chickens before breakfast, or the hot summer days of harvest and chopping wood, or the cool evenings spent on the porch with no television, no radio, just talking and being together and listening to the land.

Sheila left that night, took the rest of her things and moved, really moved, into the house closer to town, never to set foot on the property again.

Now, now that he’s living alone in the beautiful house and that’s not going to change, he knows this can’t last. He’s had to take a job in the city because the farm can’t support both itself and the other house, and between the work on the farm and the drive into the city and his dwindling reserves and his growing exhaustion, he knows the end is near.

In the wonderful silence of his beloved house, Walt eats his lunch alone and watches the news and tries to sleep at night.

He’ll have to sell the farm.

In the wonderful silence of his beloved house on the sweetest farm in three counties, the crack of his heart is almost audible.

• • •

“And what do you do?”

The girl turns from her typing and smiles shyly up at him. She really is a lovely young thing—an open face and soft hair and blue eyes. Walt’s always been a sucker for blue eyes.

“I just type stuff.”

“No, I mean, what do you really do?”

He sees the shift in her face. He can tell he’s done it again, can tell he’s reached inside in that way he has of slipping past defenses, of touching the real heart within and plucking one string, just one, to get a clear, pure note of truth out of someone’s soul.

She pauses only briefly, then says, “Well, I play the piano.”

He smiles—this is what he lives for. “Are you any good?”

This time, though the pause is no longer, he can feel the weight of her answer gather in the space between them, and she says, as if it’s the first time she’s ever thought, much less said, the words, “Yeah. I’m pretty good.”

That’s it. That’s the entire exchange. He’s called back into the meeting, and she returns to her typing, but he feels the glow for the rest of the day. He warms himself at it, and replays it that night sitting alone in his hotel room.

This was an especially fine catch, an excellent specimen. It will carry him through much loneliness.

• • •

Walt finishes lunch and cleans up. He’ll spend the afternoon getting in a store of firewood—that should keep him busy and maybe he’ll be tired enough to sleep early and well. He’s already packed for tomorrow’s trip back to the West Coast, just has to gather his toiletries in the morning before heading out.

The trip: that’s something to look forward to, anyway. The project is going like gangbusters, in large part because of his relationship with the customer, and everyone knows it. He smiles. It’s so rare to be publicly appreciated—he’ll enjoy it while he can.

This trip will be just one week, but will span two weekends, and that’s what he likes the most anyway. He’s grown fond of spending his Sunday mornings with a book and coffee on the beach that’s just across the street from the hotel’s grounds, and he’s never happier than when poking about the rolling countryside in his rented car, discovering the delights offered by the fabled coast, delights that, to his East Coast, wintered-over heart, are lusciously exotic.

‘And I can hardly wait to get back to Las Quince Leteras…´

His visits seem to engender a kind of festival atmosphere in the office at large, and hardly an evening passes without some of them, sometimes most or all of them, finding an excuse to go out to dinner. When Walt calls the shots, it’s the Mexican restaurant found at the end of the Road of the Flowers, as he thinks of it, the highway lined with oleanders in the middle of February for heaven’s sake.

‘The best enchiladas in the world…’

• • •

“Who all is going? How many cars do we need?”

There is a flurry of excitement, and peer pressure mounts for everyone to go this time. “Why” is not exactly clear, but that seems to be the order of the day, maybe because it’s his first day back in town and there was a triumphant delivery to the customer today and, well, why not? And finally, the last one succumbs. The girl says she will skip choir practice and go. Walt’s teased her into it by saying he needs a “date” and since all the other women in the office are married, she must accompany him. Everyone joined in the office flirtation, and she agreed in the air of general glad-heartedness. He’s startled by the little flip in his chest.

It’s one of those great meals that come along too rarely: everyone is in a fine mood, the restaurant is thrilled to see them again, to see them all this time, the patio is available, the evening is balmy.

The meal stretches long into the night, but finally they are all back in the office parking lot, chattering, reluctant to let go, gradually drifting off into their separate cars. A happy crew, happily filled with excellent food and excellent company and just enough hearty Mexican beer.

“Hey, Walt, let’s go for coffee!” There’s an all-night coffee shop just across the parking lot.

“Well, maybe.” He turns to the girl, still there in spite of having said thirty minutes ago that she had to leave. “How about it? You, too?”

She starts, seeming flustered. He doesn’t miss this. “Oh, I think I have to go home.”

“Are you sure?” He presses gently—she really is pretty.

She hesitates, and he hopes, but then he sees it in her eyes. In spite of her youth and obvious naiveté, something in her burgeoning woman’s heart knows what’s going on. And she’s not ready.

“No, thanks.” She’s regretful, but she’s leaving.

‘Oh, well…’ He pushes down his disappointment, stays light. “See you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah, see you tomorrow.”

In an instant, she is in her car and slipping away from him. He watches her go, wishing he could have managed it differently, wanting to have gotten her away from the others for just a moment, to have touched her soul again, just one more hit.

He’s begun to think about her differently now. He’s no novice when it comes to affairs. Sheila had broken his heart when they still had been almost newly-weds, and, in bitter reaction, he’d given himself permission to act as he pleased, never looking back. He likes to think he’s always taken care to avoid real damage on all sides, choosing savvy partners, never falling in love, measuring the time span in weeks and cutting things off cleanly, and he believes he’s mostly succeeded.

This girl… He likes her. She is so young, though. He’ll probably have to pass this time.

But then, something about the rest of that week in the office… The girl is chatty when they work together, and they are easy together. He flirts with her, but it feels funny, sort of … unnecessary, as though they have an old connection or something. This is nothing like the prelude to his other affairs. There is, of course, that little frisson when he hears her voice from across the office, that bump of excitement when, as he eats alone in the hotel dining room at night, he thinks of the next day, and of seeing her smile—at him!—as he steps off the elevator.

But that heavy, driving sexual tension, the narrow-minded pursuit, the calculation of the situation—no, instead, it’s like he’s remembering something, something he forgot a long time ago. As the days pass, he can’t figure it out, it’s always on his mind.

Friday comes, his last day in the office. He’s scheduled his return flight so that he gets his Sunday morning on the beach, but he feels a little let down, somehow, to be returning home, even though there’s that tractor auction he’s been looking forward to. The office is full of weekend plans, this time—everybody’s got something going on. Gene’s taking his kids camping—‘Camping in winter, what a California notion!’—and Reva wants to drive up to the wine country with her visiting in-laws. Walt’s plans to ‘read in the sun on the beach before going back to the snow’ are affectionately scoffed at by these lucky inhabitants of paradise, but he defends himself—he knows what he likes. He makes sure the announcement of his plans is quite public, and then listens for the response. Ah, the girl has church choir obligations. Oh, well.

That evening, he takes his quiet dinner in the hotel dining room. It really is a good restaurant, and he lingers with his book over his coffee and excellent sour cherry pie as long as seems socially decent, then heads back to his room.

As he exits the lobby to cross the grassy park separating the restaurant from the rooms, he can’t believe his eyes: walking in the same direction as he, but in front of him… There she is! ‘What is she…?’ His heart fairly leaps out of his chest, but he is not about to let this opportunity slip away. He quickens his pace. As he catches up to her, he drapes a light, quick arm over her shoulders.

“Well, hi, there!”

She stops and twirls toward him, so suddenly his arm drops off and he almost runs into her.

“Oh!” she gasps. “Hi! I got out early, and I remembered this is where you always stay and I just thought…” She’s babbling breathlessly, so he smoothly takes things into his own hands.

“I’m so glad you came by. Do you want to walk with me on the beach?”

She quiets and hesitates a moment, meeting his gaze steadily, thinking right in front of him, deciding openly, in that way he would become so accustomed to.

“Okay.”

• • •

Spring. Late spring, in fact, nights still cool, but with summer’s promised warmth carried on sunny breezes and proclaimed in heartbreakingly blue skies.

The man carries his bag across the stretch of tarmac between the tiny airport’s single gate and the steps leading up to the plane’s door. This is his last trip to the coast for the foreseeable future. The project is finished, a roaring success, but, in the way of things, the next one can’t possibly be funded for at least a year. He’ll miss the weather, he’ll miss the camaraderie, he’ll even miss the work— professionally, it had been quite satisfying.

The girl has driven him to the airport, as has become their habit over the previous months. He makes sure no one knows, but is not sure exactly why he does that. Is it to protect her reputation? His? Maybe it’s to shield what they have from the harsh light of reality, to keep it secret, safe, to allow them to float just a little longer in a forgotten side pool of time’s great rushing river, to enjoy it while he still can.

At the top of the stairs he turns to wave goodbye. She stands at the gate, the noonday sun burnishing the top of her hair, firing her red shirt, casting sharp shadows around her form, her form that he can still feel warm against his chest, solid in his arms, rooted in his heart.

He smiles and waves and ducks to enter the cool cabin of the commuter. He settles into his seat for the short hop to LAX, and thinks about what lies ahead. He’s made his decision, and it takes his breath away whenever he lets it in. For this girl—so young and innocent that she doesn’t realize the power she holds over him, can’t envision even her own future, much less the road ahead for the two of them—for her, and for him, he is going to blow his entire world irrevocably apart. He knows this sets the seal on the sale of his farm.

The plane taxis out to the runway and, as its wheels lift off the ground and it launches itself into the air on nothing but faith in a dry, bookish theory of aerodynamics, he begins to cry.

• • •