Grandma told me this with tears in her eyes. I think she decided it was time to just let it all hang out. She’s old, with nothing to lose. I loved her for telling me this. And now I know I have a Czech cousin somewhere!
I’m with Thoreau. You’ve got to face facts, live deliberately.
I’ve been working with a neighbor roofing his garage. That’s very satisfying to me. I’m reading Aeschylus, ran through the Elizabethan stuff in a hurry, couldn’t bear Alex Pope, that old rapist, and am deep into War and Peace. That goes surprisingly fast. I’m glad you’re enjoying Ford Madox Ford—don’t you love that name? I miss you, Snooks. I’m lonely without you, and I’m sorry I ever hurt you. Someday I’ll make you proud of me. I wish I could do that now. That reminds me. I have a big surprise for you.
Love,
Jimmy
ANN WAS DISAPPOINTED that he did not mention her psychedelic “Kubla Khan,” but otherwise she regarded his letter as a true love letter. Frank the psychologist agreed that Jimmy wrote a good letter. Later, she thought that Frank was trying to suggest that what she wanted to believe was true was not necessarily the same as what was true.
ANN ENCOUNTERED SANJAY one afternoon as she arrived home from the library with a fresh pile of books. He invited her in for tea and helped settle her books onto the table.
“You have an overload,” he said.
“Yes, I barely made it across campus to the car.”
Smelling the sandalwood, she wondered just what kind of trip he had made with Jingles to the Haight. He turned on his teakettle and selected a box of tea from several on a shelf.
“What do you think of my Indian outfit?” she asked. She was wearing a purple tunic with silvery trim and her water buffalo sandals.
“I am amused by the rage for India. But it is very nice that you admire our style.” He smiled. “The exports are good for India.”
“Pixie has a teak elephant the size of a Great Dane.”
Ann noticed a small wooden Buddha on Sanjay’s desk. His apartment was neat and tasteful, unlike her apartment, which held nothing of interest, nothing artistic. If she typed some more papers, she might buy a Buddha or an Indian-print tablecloth.
“Are you familiar with water buffaloes?” she asked, displaying her sandals.
“Oh, yes. These are popular here now. The protestors like them.”
“What do you think of the war in Vietnam, Sanjay?”
“I don’t judge the individual,” he said. “The soldiers. But the war is not good.”
“How do they see us in India?”
“We are always looking at America,” he said. He placed two small yellow cups on the table. “America is so powerful, and when we see America become involved in a place where it does not know the people—the customs, the history—then we worry. But I can’t speak for everyone. India is a large country, with many points of view.”
“Do you want to stay here after you get your degree?”
“Probably.” His smile was broad, showing his gums. “There are many opportunities for research. And I always want to find out things.”
He lifted the teapot and began to pour. “This is a tea for peace,” he said.
ONE AFTERNOON, FOLLOWING Chip’s advice, Ann drove to Foothills Park. There were few people in the park except for workmen repairing trails. She found an attractive clearing near the parking area. After brushing away the rough debris from beneath a eucalyptus tree, she spread a towel on the ground, which was soft and springy. She had brought an egg-salad sandwich and a Coca-Cola. She read about half of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon. The Beatles song “Nowhere Man” played in her head. Her eyes followed a line of large ants trekking to a heap of wood chips. Some kind of woodpecker rat-a-tat-tatted. An airplane droned. She kept remembering the acid trip with Jimmy—playing at the redwoods park, balancing on the fallen log. Something had changed that day, something that caused Jimmy to leave. The acid had walloped her, but it left no dark mysteries.
Erewhon was forgettable, satire on a time gone by. She skimmed, then tried reading Boethius. She had plunged into the reading list with no particular plan, just flitting around among many styles and periods. She was still glowing from Jimmy’s recent letter, his love letter. Although she was warmed by his report about his grandmother’s confession, his problems with his family seemed overblown. Shouldn’t he be more understanding of his mother now that he knew about her sister’s past trouble? He was free. He didn’t have to sleep in a room with his toy trains.
SHE LEFT FOOTHILLS Park late in the afternoon, intending to go down Sand Hill Road to find the Palo Alto Tree, the towering sequoia that Albert had urged her to visit. When she went there in April, she had been too excited about Jimmy—his hair, his warm hands—to consider why the parallel journeys of the explorers Boone and Portola stirred Albert so much. There seemed to be an almost mystical significance for him.
Just after she turned left on Junipero Serra, the car began vibrating and an awful racket from the engine, a hammering and clanging, shook the car. The engine quit. She managed to pull onto the shoulder below an embankment and glide on the grass to a stop. The car was silent. The ignition did nothing. Grabbing her purse, she made her way up the embankment in her floppy sandals, the scrub grass scratching her ankles. She could see some buildings ahead—a gas station and a small market. She was hot from the walk, and her ankles itched. At the market, after using the restroom, she bought a Coke, then asked for a telephone. As she searched the Yellow Pages for mechanics and tow trucks, she pondered whether to call Pixie, or perhaps Meredith and John. But maybe a wrecker would let her ride in his truck. Ann had taken her car to a mechanic in Palo Alto, but she could not remember his name or the name of his business.
Ann was relieved to see a highway patrol car arrive outside and a tall officer emerge.
“Can you help me, please? My car broke down.” She pointed past the street to the embankment and the highway below.
“Old black Chevy?”
“Yes, you saw it?”
“I called in a report,” he said. “Why did you leave it?”
“I had to get help.”
“You should have stayed with the vehicle.”
Ann was embarrassed. How was she to know? She had never had a breakdown, but now she had an inkling of what her parents had worried about when she took off in that old junk heap for California by herself.
The patrolman suggested a certain wrecker and waited while she made the call. The wrecking company seemed to know the place in Palo Alto where she had had her car repaired once. She finished her Coke and left the bottle.
In no more than half a minute, the patrolman sped her to her car to wait for the wrecker. She gathered her belongings from the front seat.
“I’ll give you a ride,” he said. “I’m not supposed to, but I’m going that way.”
He was slim with a hard mouth. She had heard that these patrolmen were called the CHIP guys, for the California Highway Patrol.
AS SHE WATCHED her aged car disappear behind the wrecker, reared up like a horse on its hind legs, she felt as if a string of unaccountable losses was piling up—Jingles’s dancer, Sanjay’s girlfriend, Jimmy off in Chicago. And the GIs in Vietnam, she thought a moment later. She thought of what Jimmy had said about Heraclitus. Things change.