Daphne_A Novel Read online

  But I didn’t learn early enough how to control the current in me. When Coach sat me out in our next match, I pretended to be heartbroken. As I did when we lost, ending our chance at a tenth straight trip to state. But, really, I was grateful. I was growing warped, deformed. Anything that caused the buzzing I would try now to simply avoid. Slowly, my branches and trunk began to twist and bind around the condition. And in all of the obscuring foliage, the smiling girl in those yearbook photos began to disappear.

  EIGHT

  COMING DOWN HAIGHT STREET THE SATURDAY AFTER our shambolic make-out at my apartment, I half-hoped Ollie hadn’t come.

  There on the couch, my jaw had sagged all the way, leaving him to press his tongue into my gaping mouth. “Ahhhgggh,” he’d said, like a patient at the dentist. He’d pulled back, narrowed his eyes. “This is what happened last time, right? After the bar?”

  “May-be this is just how they kiss back in In-di-ana.”

  “Look, you can tell me. I’m not going to jump out the window.”

  “No, you’re too nice for that. You’ll just go running out the door.” I’d let out a deep breath and scooched away on the couch. “You’d better have another glass of wine. It takes a minute.”

  I’d educated him, given him the speech, the ancient speech. I even used Dr. Bell’s puppet metaphor. When I finished, he was silent. I was silent. An annihilating silence floated in the room. “So, there’s baggage here,” I finally prompted. “A fucking 747’s worth.”

  He’d asked questions, made an effort. I regaled him with anecdotes, told him about back in the dorms in Bloomington, my suitemates and I drinking berry-flavored beer, gossiping, carrying on. I had this little routine: I put a pillow on the table, and every time I cracked up, thump, my forehead went down on the pillow. Of course, everyone laughed even harder, me included, so I just kept thumping down, again and again, while the laughter rained all around me.

  “That sounds tough,” Ollie had said, his face long. “And complicated.”

  “No, it’s pretty simple. I feel something small, I make funny faces. Something big, I fall down.”

  He’d squeaked out a sad grin—“Sorry, I can tell you don’t like being interrogated”—checked his watch, and apologized: He really had to go, an early wake-up to get on a job. He’d wanted to make weekend plans, a walk in Golden Gate Park. “Sure,” I said, “I’ll text you. I’ll even use my real number this time.” But he’d insisted on just meeting there, without any devices intervening. He’d kissed me good-bye on the cheek, like a boy with his spinster aunt. Then he was out the door.

  Now, approaching the two stone pillars at the entrance to the park, I tried to prepare for either eventuality. The hollow, empty sag of disappointment—he wasn’t there. Or the choking tautness of anticipation, expanding possibility, and desire—he was. Maybe, if I didn’t look too hard, I would simply miss him. But there he was, next to a knot of street kids and their dogs. He spotted me, waved, and I swallowed hard.

  Itemize his face: soft, patchy beard; two birthmarks, one on chin, one partly covered by sideburns; delicate cheekbones, smooth, boyish even; thin, pale, slightly chapped lips; wide-winged nose; flaring, almost puckish ears; thick but not overbearing eyebrows; surprisingly long lashes; and his eyes, smoke-colored, reticent, curious, startling . . . Look at anyone’s face close enough, and the parts make no sense. Still, the little muscle in the center of my clavicle clenched tighter—I almost launched into a coughing fit as he came near. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that once I started cataloging, I couldn’t stop. My thoughts raced and smeared together:

  The easy way he drew me into a hug, “There you are!” his scent weaving with pot smoke from the nearby kids, street dogs with bandanas around their necks, the lofty cypress trees above us feathering the breeze, Ollie tipping back his head, sighing, “Middle of February, we get days like this?” laying it on a little thick, me smiling at him, a tight smile that wanted to broaden, seeing him seeing me in my hiking shorts/stair-climbing shoes/hoodie, like I was ready to help someone move, we passed under Lincoln Ave, and God I loved the park, the city disappeared, the shaggy curve of Hippie Hill, everyone so glad and easy, but distant, just distant enough, laughter and beers cracking open, the deep pulse of a drum circle rising and falling on the breeze, dogs barking, running down tennis balls, happy free dogs, Ollie bending to unlace his work boots, a slightly too long glance at his ass, stuffing his socks into the boots, slinging them over his shoulder, “It’s necessary to get some grass between your toes now and then,” me needing to make a crack about it, “You’d get a fucking hypodermic in my neighborhood,” trying to recover, asking him about the radios he fixed up, telling him I had an engineering degree, “I like problems I can solve,” him answering that he just liked to fiddle, liked poking around inside things, laughing, “Sorry, that sounded like a bad come-on, maybe I’ve been in construction too long,” describing the Outer Sunset dives where he drank with his crew, illegal Irish guys mostly, they got up on their stools, unhitched their tool belts, dropped them right on the floor, “No women for miles, me lurking down in your hood is a luxury,” and I said, “So you put your name on the chalkboard and wait for some little thing to rack up a game,” “Nah, I wait for the tall, leggy ones, ah, shit, sorry . . .” Ollie scratching his head, frustrated, damn it, was I back-footing him into these lines? him confessing he was nervous, me confessing, “Me, too,” wanting to say, Our bodies already recognize each other, even if we don’t know how to talk yet, instead saying, “What a gorgeous day,” so inane, but truly it was, fine-grain California light burnishing everything, the smell of pine and eucalyptus and this man walking next to me, and I thought, Enjoy this, just enjoy this right now, not too much but also not too little, and I said, “I’m enjoying this”—just this could be enough—and he said, “Me, too,” and I heard a bird way up somewhere echoing, “Me, too, me, too,” everything ringing at the precise same note, sometimes feeling is just a resonance, a pitch too high and pure to be heard, and then I took my own shoes off, both of us laughing about it, just enough, grass slippery waxy sweet between my toes, letting myself laugh a little more as he told stories about the Irish guys, not too much not too little, control it, control it, but Christ did I have to, couldn’t I just—we came to Stow Lake, pretty little pond pretty water grasses lilies Japanese bridges, pretty couples out in paddleboats, giggling their way around, sunlight diamonding on the water, grasses tipping back and forth, eerie, too much like the cattails, the willows, the river sparkling in the noon light, or maybe the envy I tasted seeing those happy heedless couples was just too bitter, either way my side knotting up—why? I couldn’t say, only I needed to get away and Ollie didn’t protest, just a curious glance at me, we kept going, a veil of fog slipping over the park, the salty, steely ocean from twenty blocks away, suddenly I shivered and shivered, Ollie offered his jacket, and I said, “A chilly day in paradise doesn’t bother a midwesterner like me,” shivering inside, we came to another pond, middle-aged men sailing model boats, Ollie wanted to watch, the little boats’ wakes sketching quick trembling diagrams on the surface, so gentle, so delicate, but I pulled us away again, unsettled by my own urgency, “Sorry, I want to see the bison,” the fog layered and thickened, the flat-topped cypresses looming prehistoric, silence for whole minutes, say something, Daphne, say something, finally we came to the bison pen, leaned on the fence, seeing only their dim bulks in the murk, a foghorn blew across the bay, huge and hollow in its loneliness, and the bison started moving, disappearing further, though one broke off, drifted toward us, we watched it take size and shape until it stopped only twenty feet away, watching us, small skeptical eyes, the bearded monolith of its head, steam rising off its body, dissolving into the fog, Oh, what did it feel locked inside all of its improbable flesh? maybe fear sometimes, the impulse to flee, brief dark glimmer in the veins, though even that was hard to imagine, so forbearing, animal stoicism, feed reproduce feed reproduce, no thoughts about feelings, fee
lings about feelings, thoughts about feelings about feelings about—no, goddammit, enjoy this, just enjoy this, it is magical, this creature crossing over to watch us watching it, Ollie leaning into me, me leaning into him, let go, let go just a little, propping myself between Ollie and the fence, warm, an improbable ray of sun through the low gray fog, Ollie’s warmth gathering me in, the strain of keeping my pleasure from vaulting too high, tiring, all just so tiring . . .

  “We’d better get back,” I said. “UV rays through the fog, we’ll get burned.”

  And as we turned away, a sudden, swift arrow struck me, that this was both so much and so little, and I lost a step, just one clumsy step.

  “Was that it again?” Ollie asked quietly. “Your thing?” He said he’d tried to do a little research, tried to see what he could learn on his own.

  “You did?” I was impressed, touched even. “Well, don’t wear out your library card. A lot of it’s impenetrable.”

  “No, I . . . I find it fascinating.”

  That set me off—“fascinating”—though I knew he didn’t mean anything by it. “When you tell someone, you get two kinds of responses. The first is no one believes you. They think you’re faking or just making it up. Or they say, ‘Oh, I know, I get so emotional. I’m always so depressed.’ Everyone thinks you’re just depressed. Though, Lord knows, it’s depressing enough. A lovely little circle: You get sad because of the condition, then the sadness triggers an attack, which makes you even sadder. Fantastic fucking irony.”

  “It sounds tough,” Ollie said again, hesitant. “Really tough.”

  “The second kind of people, they want to cure you. Have you tried yoga? Meditation? Prayer? Or they’ve got their home remedies. There was this woman, a friend of my mom, she kept telling me to eat these mushrooms. She said she’d cured her sister’s cancer by feeding her these certain mushrooms. Everything was goddamn mushrooms with this lady. Now they say, Go gluten-free! Egg-free! Get your fillings pulled so you’re mercury-free! At least the people who think you’re faking just end up leaving you alone.”

  “But there is no cure?”

  “Listen, don’t worry about it. It’s my thing, I take care of it.”

  I sounded so fucking miserable even to myself. We both went silent again, the buzzing was rising, I tasted tears gathering, we came back out into the broad open green, there everyone was still laughing and playing, my legs wanted to run, they wanted to but I didn’t trust them, preparing, looking for a good place to land, always preparing to fall, so stupid to think I could do this, the buzzing, control it, stupid, a soft place to land, anywhere to land, no just control it, control it, stupid stupid, can’t you just—“Hey,” Ollie said, took my hand in his, “you okay over there?” and—

  His hand. His bony, scraped, scarred fingers. His warm, rough, callused palm. We stood near a grove of eucalyptus, their ribbony leaves rushing in the breeze, releasing their dense, daydream scent, and I held his hand tight, as tight as I could, and my despair, my tumbling, rushing despair began to leach away.

  “I’m o-kay,” I said. “I think I’m going to put my shoes back on now.”

  “Me, too.” We sat in the grass, legs partly intertwined. Ollie watched me fumble with my laces as the buzzing receded. Once, twice I failed to tie a knot. “Need help?”

  “No, I’ve got it.” But I wasn’t ready to leap up yet. “Can we just sit here a while? The smell . . . I love eucalyptus.”

  “Got nowhere else I want to be.”

  I lay against him, he lay against me. We watched the fog spin fine lace, then soft wool, over the last of the afternoon sun. “You know what I like about you,” Ollie said. “You’re always paying attention. People who do that tend to be kind.”

  “Or cautious.”

  “Still worried about getting burned?”

  “I could lie here all day. But . . .” I was exhausted, from tracking my thoughts so minutely, from how sad and soaring every moment seemed to be. “Yeah, we should go.”

  We came back out into the scruffy bustle of the Haight. “So, hey,” Ollie said, “I don’t really do ‘dates,’ dinner and a movie and all that, but I really—”

  “No movies,” I said brusquely. Claustrophobia, the cold taste of steel . . . I pushed the memory down. “Why don’t I cook for you again? Come to my place. I’ll stuff you silly.”

  “No, I have an idea.” He searched my face. “If you don’t mind a surprise.”

  “Those can be kind of tough.”

  “I know, but I really want to show you this.”

  Is this your research, I wanted to say, telling you people like me don’t get out much? Instead I said, “Okay.” Maybe he was the second type, a curer, and didn’t understand yet how useless the effort would be. Still, for now, I wanted to luxuriate in this a little. I put my arm around him, breathed him in.

  A cab came down Stanyan, and I flagged it. Ollie kissed me once, on the lips. I girded myself for it—smoke, cattails—but there was such a charge built up I fell into him slightly. Maybe he was getting used to it. “Friday,” he said. “Seven p.m., 16th Street BART. Meet me there?”

  “Assuming the transit cops don’t go on another rampage.”

  “God willing.”

  As the cab pulled away, my body was humming or maybe shivering again. I turned and looked for him, but he’d already disappeared into the crowd.

  NINE

  I WAS ON TIME, FOR A CHANGE. I WATCHED THEM COME IN.

  Miranda looked harried, downtrodden. It was the middle of the semester, when she started to fall apart a little. Teshawn seemed unusually alert, gave me a big hello and a flirtatious smile. I cocked an eyebrow back—Who you looking at, big boy? This cracked him up, enough he had to get down in his desk quick. Bill was a little shell-shocked, polo pit-stained, five o’clock shadow. Someone had been sleeping on the couch or, anyway, not getting his wife’s usual attentions. This happened a few times a year. Being so dependent put him in a weak bargaining position. Actually, it was good to see she pushed back on him now and then.

  Sherman arrived late and launched into a flustered, tongue-thick apology. We didn’t get the whole thing. Right behind him, Russell came in, on crutches. He had a bright red abrasion down his right arm, and his right leg was in a huge wire and plastic cast.

  General alarm and eye-fluttering.

  “Russell!” I couldn’t help exclaiming. “What the hell’d you do?”

  He hobbled over to a desk, fit himself into it as best he could, his right leg stiffly, painfully extended, and started to explain. He’d been playing bike polo on one of the caged basketball courts in Dolores Park. “A straight-up, normal match,” he told us. “Except this dude kept fucking with me, poking his mallet at my spokes like he wants to flip me. He’s dogging me the whole time, and I don’t even know who the hell he is. Then it comes to me—the door guy at El Rio, who thinks I was scheming on his boyfriend the other week. I’m trying to stay chill, but”—Russell winced at a pang in his leg—“just as I’m going to shoot, he hip-checks me, slams right into my bike. I see him coming, so I stay up. But now I’m pissed—he’s carrying on like I jacked him. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m charging him, full bore, out of my fucking mind. Except I don’t even get to him. I get that little dizzy spell, that weird fizzing thing, and then I’m gone. The bike goes out from under me, my leg all jammed up in the frame, and I flip over, skid like ten feet. Which, yeah, is why my arm’s fucked, too.”

  Russell sat looking at all of us looking at him in horror. He seemed to not quite credit what had happened. “The other guys,” he said, “they said it was like I got struck by lightning. I folded like a pup tent in a fucking hurricane.”

  We were all consternation and advice: Russell, what were you thinking? You shouldn’t even put yourself in that kind of position. And if you do, walk away! Or better yet, sit down for a minute. Protect yourself. Lie down on the court if you have to.

  “Lie down?” he said. “I’d look like a total dipshit in front o
f everyone!”

  I’d mostly been sitting out the conversation, but I thought of myself on the volleyball court. “Russell,” I said, “you’re sick. You’ve got to understand that.”

  He had his arms crossed over his chest. The look he gave me tried for “whatever,” but I could see the doubt eroding it. “My doctor says I’ll just get kind of weak sometimes. What’s new, man? That’s been happening forever. I should get more sleep or something.”

  “A decent night’s sleep helps,” I said, “makes you more even-keeled. But, Russell, it’s not going to get better.”

  “I come here, listen to you people, and all I hear is bitching and moaning. I mean, seriously, who cares about your kid’s fucking birthday party?”

  Bill muttered something under his breath. Ordinarily, Sherman would’ve stepped in. He hated any argument. Today, however, he let it go. He wore the same shirt from last week, a now-rumpled blue-and-pink gingham. I caught his eye. He only nodded at me—go ahead.

  “Russell, I’m not saying never get on a bike again. But you’ve got to—”

  “I listen to you people saying, ‘I can’t laugh at a joke. I can’t hold my kid. I can’t fight with my husband or wife or whoever. I can’t look at a beautiful sunset. I can’t even drink a few beers and fuck—’ ”

  “Russell,” I said, “calm down. Take a breath.”

  He was starting to droop now. Somehow, though, he kept up his indignation. “I can’t listen to all your defeat. It’s just fucking sad. You’re worried about me hurting myself? Man, I should kill myself if I can’t do all the things you say.”

  Glum silence followed. “Remember, everyone,” Sherman murmured, “stay open.” Eventually, Miranda shared the sob story she’d clearly come today to tell. She was up for tenure, and no way in hell was she getting it. She could barely engage with her students, who were always crying, literally crying, about their grades. Her attacks were getting so frequent and wore her out so much, she hadn’t been able to start a paper, let alone publish one, in over three years. So, on top of her nonexistent social and romantic life—dating was a joke—now she was facing losing her job as well. By the time the meeting wrapped up, it had turned into a real mess. Sherman made another plug for the study at Stanford. But we all just wanted to get the hell out.