to him. Not that she cares about anyone but herself.”
“She cares about me,” said Maddy.
“Oh, right.”
“I see her every couple of weeks.”
“What?” I sat up in bed. “Did she phone you? She didn’t phone me.”
“She gave me her address when she left. She’s not much for the phone.”
“You have her address? Does Georgia have it too?”
“No, only me.”
“Who cares, anyway. I don’t want to see her. I have no interest in it.”
The next day I called Big Bear information.
“I have a Thomas Winston on Coot Street, would that be it?”
I guessed a number. “One thirty-five?”
“No, twenty-six,” said the operator.
I started driving south on the San Diego Freeway, then cut east to the San Bernardino. With each mile the ground got flatter, the buildings uglier, and when it seemed that the world could get no duller, civilization stopped, and the only things on either side of the road were cactus and tumbleweed. The turn for Big Bear was modestly marked with a wooden sign. As I negotiated the winding road up the mountain and into a forest of pines, I felt more and more ridiculous. I passed motels—built of whole logs, just as Georgia had promised—with names like Hitching Post Inn. I couldn’t turn back, I’d come too far, but I felt as if, on a lark, I was heading for Dodge City.
At elevation four thousand feet there were patches of snow between the trees. I didn’t even have a sweater with me, and my radio now was picking up only one station, which played country-western music. I stopped for gas but didn’t want to ask the man how far it was to Big Bear. He might guess why I was there, and I would be found out: girl needing to see mother. In the gas station office I browsed among the maps. There was a street map of Big Bear, not officially printed but something that had been run off on a mimeograph machine. I chose it in what I imagined was an offhanded way, so the guy who was paying no attention to me wouldn’t notice.
Driving the twisty road was beginning to make me carsick, when the road suddenly straightened and I passed into town—almost through it, actually: Big Bear General Store, the Bear Claw Diner, a bowling alley, many more motels. All the buildings on the left had a shiny blue lake as a backdrop.
At the edge of the main drag was Spruce Street, which headed away from the lake up the mountain. At the first curve I found Coot—not a proper street really, but a gravel road with houses turning up every so often. One was a trailer; some were prefabricated shacks with water tanks and stacks of wood in the front yard. But then I hit Twenty-six. The number was painted in whitewash on a pile of rocks by the driveway. The same type of gray rocks, only much larger, formed the foundation of the house, which, like almost everything else, was constructed of logs.
It wasn’t a one-room cabin like Abe Lincoln’s. It had a big wide porch and even a second story, although the second story was much smaller than the first. But it was as different from our home in Westwood as a little grass shack in Hawaii would be. Dad always called our place a “Father Knows Best house”—graceful but sturdy, two stories, gray with a white door and white wood trim around the big bay windows, which proudly offered a peek at the comfort within: wall-to-wall carpeting, upholstered couches and armchairs in sensible rectangular arrangements.
I started to get out and then realized that the lumps of brown that I had mistaken for more tumbleweed were squirrels. At home we had one squirrel per block, but this place had squirrel armies. I was terrified to leave the car. I sat there trapped, occupying myself by trying to figure out how to explain my arrival. I couldn’t say that I was passing by. That was ludicrous. Suppose I said that I was on my way back from Palm Springs and detoured on a whim? That seemed okay, I thought, as a pickup truck pulled into the driveway and my mother got out. She walked around to the passenger side and opened the door. Oh my God, she has a kid. I had this panic that she might, in three months, have produced a five-year-old. Instead two dogs bounded out. Golden retrievers, I guessed, but then I didn’t know dogs.
“Mom?”
“Eve, is that you?” she said in a way that sounded pleasantly surprised. The dogs barked, chasing off the squirrels.
As I followed her into the house, I rubbed my bare arms for warmth. She was wearing a jacket stuffed like a pillow, a kind I’d never seen before, and she’d exchanged her shirtwaists and pumps for jeans and heavy brown laced boots. She tramped, placed her feet down solidly with evident pleasure. My mother’s identity is all tied up in her shoes, I thought, watching her whack the soles with a piece of kindling to clean off the snow and mud before she opened the front door. I just wiped my feet on the mat and felt, as I did so, that I was maintaining allegiance to Westwood and my father.
I tried to get past the entry but the dogs kept sniffing me. “I’ll put them out. Muffin, Daisy.” My mother snapped her fingers. The dogs immediately trotted after her into the kitchen, leaving me alone in Frontierland.
The floor of the living room was wood, something never seen in my neighborhood, and scattered here and there were small multicolored circular rugs. There was a huge stone fireplace. The pine cones on the mantel seemed less like decoration and more like a scientific display of forest vegetation. The furniture was made of branches tied together and bent into shape, with the barest concession to comfort—flat corduroy cushions. A plump throw pillow sitting by itself against the back of the twig couch frame was embroidered with these words: “Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footsteps. “There was a framed photo of Mom with Tom Winston, standing by the lake. He had his huge pale arm around her, and she, barely visible, looked like a plant tucked into the crevice of a very large rock.
“Would you like coffee?” she called out.
I looked at the photo. I couldn’t answer. She appeared in the doorway. “Do you drink coffee now?” I shook my head. “How about orange juice?” I nodded yes.
She waved me into the kitchen. It had no conveniences. There weren’t even cabinets, just shelves with pots and pans and a jumble of canned goods piled on them. The tile on the counters was chipped. Out of an ancient refrigerator she took a carton of juice, then handed it to me with a glass. This was what she would have done at home, let me decide how much I wanted. As I poured, she put the kettle on and opened a jar of Sanka. “She’s switched from scotch to Sanka,” I prepared to tell Georgia.
I stood there holding the juice carton. It seemed too forward for me to stick it back in the refrigerator. The carton got heavier and, in my mind, more prominent. Finally I placed it on the counter. While my mother spooned some Sanka into a mug, I examined my glass, running my fingers over the design of dancing balloons which was almost worn off.
“So how’s college?” my mother asked.
I burst into tears. She stood there watching. She did not come over and put her arms around me. She just waited. Eventually I stopped crying long enough to ask for a tissue. She disappeared into another room and returned with a box. I wiped my eyes. “Come home, Mom, you have to.”
The water in the kettle started to boil, sending a scream into the room. My mother poured hot water into her cup. “Why don’t we sit in the living room,” she said.
She pointed to a rocker as if it were the most comfortable spot, and seated herself opposite on the couch, her back squarely against that embroidered pillow. She looked the same, really, her hair just longer, curling now around her ears. Probably there wasn’t a decent place in Big Bear to have your hair cut. The pink lipstick hadn’t changed. So if I poured her back into her old clothes … “Why did you leave, Mom?”
She dusted some imaginary spot off the corduroy while she considered. “I turned forty-five.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“You’ll see,” she said seriously.
I glanced at the picture