I watched his hands on the steering wheel; he had smart fingers with fine black hair that grew straight on the first joint after the knuckle. His thumbs had wide fingernails. Like me, he bit his nails, and the skin on the sides. His jaw clenched on and off, making a rippling pattern in his skin, like a fish beneath the surface of a pond.
I swallowed air, worried that when my voice came out, it would squeak, or about the very real possibility that he would not respond. I was filled with what I might say, if he asked me a question: how I didn’t do the Pledge of Allegiance at school because I said I was Buddhist; how Mrs. Keatsman twisted her ring; how my mother let me steer on the steep hills of Portola Valley when I was six; how I’d guessed the number of corn kernels in the jar; how I was practicing to do the leap like the girl in the magazine; how, when I was younger, to pass time while my mother was waiting in line at the bank, or looking at a painting at the art museum, I’d done headstands on the hard ground, painless, popping up to vertical in one motion. The moment was too fragile for these stories. I didn’t want to break it.
“How was your day?” I finally asked, my fingers shaking, in my stomach a nausea creeping up toward my throat. (What would we have for dinner? What did he eat?)
“Okay, thanks,” he said. It didn’t make him look. He lapsed back into silence and didn’t look at me for the rest of the drive.
It was not enough.
It was not enough!
The canopy of gnarled oak branches over the road flared into view and then went dark as we passed.
A single car came toward us, moving down the hill. My father toggled a rod beside the steering wheel and it gave a satisfying click; the headlights dimmed. Once we passed, he did it again, this time restoring the forest to light. I’d never noticed anyone dim lights for an oncoming car, and I felt a burst of affection for him, seized with an idea of his fineness. (When I told my mother about it the next day, she said everyone did that, everyone dimmed the brights for oncoming traffic.)
We turned onto Mountain Home Road, then onto a road with white pillars on either side, cracked and leaning, silvery in the darkness. And then we were approaching it, the face of the house: the flagpole, the gate, the house glowing white.
In the open courtyard two crates the size of small cars held giant trees shaped like bonsai, with clouds of spongy-looking foliage suspended off trunks that grew at an angle. I followed him to the front door under a high curving arch made of other rooms and suites that connected to more of the house on the other side. The front door was made of a rough wood that would give me a splinter if I ran my palm along its surface, much larger and heavier than I remembered from when I’d visited before.
Inside he flicked on a switch; the flick sound echoed against the tile floor. In the dim light I saw the grand staircase with its twisting banister disappearing upward and a motorcycle leaning against the wall in the huge entryway, the body black leather and bright chrome, double-lobed, like a wasp.
“Is that yours?” I asked. It hinted at a different life.
“Yeah,” he said. “But I stopped riding it. Wanna take a hot tub later?”
So that’s what the suit was for. When I asked, he showed me to a high-ceilinged bathroom I’d never seen before that would, in future years, come to define my idea of luxury: a disconnected cistern mounted far above the toilet; a hanging lamp in the shape of a three-dimensional star; Moorish tiles around the sink patterned in thick and colorful geometries, and bronze faucet handles shaped like wings. The room was dim and echoey, the ceiling so high you could hardly see it. I looked around for the flush and found a chain with a white ceramic knob, and when I pulled, the water came rushing down fiercely into the toilet.
I followed him into the ballroom, the ceiling ribbed with dark beams. In the center of the room was a glossy black piano with its lid lifted, a lamp, and a black leather couch. The furniture was large but looked small in this room. In the next room was a fireplace with a high arch, beneath which I could walk without stooping; beyond that, a pantry with empty white shelves that went all the way to the ceiling. Through a swinging door, we stepped into the huge white kitchen. I remembered the progression of vast rooms, the smell of mold and decay, from the time I’d visited before, but that time there had been no motorcycle or piano.
My father reached into the fridge and pulled out two wooden bowls containing salads and a bottle of juice murky with brown silt. There was nothing else inside but clean white shelves. He poured us each a glass to the brim, far more than I could drink, then filled a huge plate with the salads, piling them side by side, one shredded carrots with currants, the other bulgur wheat with parsley.
“I’m going to give you some of both, all right?” I nodded. No one had ever put so much food in front of me. Did he expect me to eat all of it?
“Now this,” he said, holding up a rectangular bottle of green glass, “is the best olive oil in the world.” I didn’t usually like olive oil, but I let him draw a green line on the salads.
He handed me an enormous fork. The salads were cold and tasted of nothing, just their own rough textures. We sat side by side on stools at the island, facing the stove; he read a newspaper while he ate. After a while he asked if I was done, and when I said yes, he took my plate and glass—both still mostly full—and put them in the sink. He didn’t say anything about how much I’d eaten.
“Let’s change into our swimsuits,” he said.
We went through a different door to a hallway and another whole set of empty rooms and a staircase with steps painted white, the paint wearing off in places.
“We’re going to have to make a run for it,” he said. There was no way to turn off the light from the top of the stairs. He flicked off the switch and we were plunged into darkness. The stairs creaked. I hugged the wall, feeling my way up. “Boo!” my father said. Then, ghostlike, “Woooooh, ooooooooooh!”
At the top I followed him to a door that led to a spindly covered wooden balcony that overlooked the courtyard with the boxed trees. The balcony trembled with the weight of our steps. “This thing’s falling apart,” he said. We walked along it to a screen door that creaked when he opened it. “The in-law suite,” he said.
“What’s an in-law?” I asked.
“A person you want to put somewhere far away.” It was a whole apartment.
It smelled like the rest of the house—old carpet and mold and wood and paint. I followed him up some steps and down a small hallway into a big, empty room, his room. There was a mattress on the floor and a huge television on a metal rack.
“And this is your bed,” he said, showing me to a room off his. There was a red shag carpet, and a futon on the floor made up with sheets tucked into its sides, and a pillow.
The small, somewhat furnished apartment somewhere inside the cavernous, echoing, and empty house gave the feeling of camping.
He left me alone to change. When I came out, he was waiting, barefoot, in shorts and a T-shirt. He handed me a big black towel—much bigger and plusher than other towels. Everything he owned was big: the trees in their crates, the front door, the fireplace, refrigerator, forks, and television.
Near the stairwell I noticed the same elevator I’d seen before. It looked like a plain doorway, except for the two black buttons beside it. I asked him if we could take it; he said yes, we could. It wouldn’t move until the outer door was closed and the latch was closed on the inner accordion door, the diamond-shaped bars traveling with us, a buzzing sound coming from somewhere inside the cage. The wall slipped by, as if it were the thing moving and not us. It was like a little prison that held you and released you somewhere else. When it stopped and he reached over to unfasten the metal latch, his arm brushed mine. I pushed open the door and leapt out into the hallway.