Landslide Excerpts

Mom beaded the way grandmas knit. She could make anything – wall art, bed spreads, Halloween costumes. Some of her beads were so small that when strung, they blended like carpets, where a hundred thousand knots became a single design. Mom kept many of her very first necklaces in an ancient mariner’s chest Jay had brought us from Chile. I loved playing with these necklaces, and not just for dress up. I made them into snakes and eels, stepping stones and paths. At Christmas, they strung across our tree, glistening like jeweled ropes.

 

Mom always beaded in front of the fire. On those nights that were too warm, we were in the Garden and her box stayed shut. Mom could string almost without looking. She would bead like the winter rain that falls all day long without stopping once. Sometimes I would try too, but I always got tired. Mom said she could keep on and on because she had dancing hands. I had wished for dancing hands too, but Mom said no.

 

“Your hands are beautiful,” Mom said, “because they are still.”

[Excerpt Landslide, Page 5]

“I take it you have had your toy lion, Lionel,  for a while?” Charlie asked.

“Jay gave him to me when I was four,” I replied.

“And Jay is?”

“My dad.”

“You call your dad by his Christian name?” Charlie sounded surprised.

I tried to think about how Jay had become Jay instead of Dad, but I couldn’t remember.

“And this?” he asked.

“Blankie,” I said, taking her too.

“Given to you?”

“By Mom.”

“Mom being Mom?” he asked.

“Yes.”

I watched his eyes sweep the room. I was not ready for him to see so much. I hadn’t planned that we would end up here. Charlie’s eyes stopped on the picture of Susie and me hugging inside a crystal frame. “Your sister?” Charlie asked.

“My best friend,” I replied. Our matching turquoise bracelets were visible from where our arms were thrown over each other’s shoulders.

“She’s back next week. She wants to meet you,” I told him.

“She knows about me,” I asked.

I nodded.

“All about me?”

I was embarrassed.

“Hmmm…” he said, picking up the photo to examine Susie more closely.

[Excerpt Landslide, Pages 65-66]

As I searched in the crannies of the earliest sunspots where the lizard first crept out of the night’s cold, I heard the throaty sound of a motor. Mom heard the approaching engine too, and she sat back on her heels in front of a vegetable bed to look in its direction. A worn pale-blue pick-up crested our driveway in a swirl of dust. Mom cried out. I ran towards it, but Mom was quicker. Jay was out, and they were in each other’s arms.

 

“But what are you doing here?” I heard Mom ask as I stole behind a gazebo.

“There was an evacuation plane,” Jay began.

“Did something happen to the Research Center?”

“One of the mechanics fell ill.” Jay was kissing her again. “Oh God, I’ve missed you.”

“Your hands,” Mom said. I noticed now that they were both wrapped in thick white gauze.

“It’s nothing,” Jay said. “They are almost healed.”

I retreated, not waiting to hear more.

 

In my mint hideaway, knees to chest, I stroked Lionel’s paws with my fingertips. Jay was supposed to be spending the whole winter in Antarctica. What was he doing back? I heard his feet coming close, crunching on scattered stones. I saw the toes of his battered, blue canvas shoes, then a blue-jean covered knee.

“Can I join you?” he asked, peering in.

At the sight of him, tears stung like traitors. I wiped at them harshly, but they wouldn’t stop. I rose to push through Mint, and out the other side.

“Wait!” Jay called.

Crossing my fingers and then my toes, I counted backwards from ten. At zero, I ran. Quickly, the Garden gave way, and a sage-like, dusty smell snuffed out Garden’s green aromas. Night was coming quickly. Rocks, ground and the shrubby brushes on each side of the trail were all becoming black as I rushed past,  deep twilight stealing their colour from the dying day. A rock caught my foot, and before I could catch myself, I fell, sliding on knees and hands. I rolled onto my bottom. Red blood polka-dotted the inside of my palm where the gravel stuck to the skin and stung. It hurt bad, but I pushed myself up, barely pausing. If anything, I ran faster, the unfamiliar mountain sounds urging me onward. I was desperate to get to Susie’s.

[Excerpt Landslide, Page 48]

A quilt covered Charlie’s navy blue childhood bed. Above the bed hung a very large pin board covered with photos. I moved in to look more closely. There were images of Charlie on bikes, at Christmas, disguised for Halloween, on his boat and more. A superman-attired boy Charlie raced down a long, grassy hill with his arms out, as if he was flying. In almost every photo, friends flanked Charlie. Many of the faces in the photos morphed older over time.

 

It struck me how different Charlie and my childhoods had been. Charlie’s house, close to the school, was in a small town where he could ride to everything on his bike. He had clearly been popular. Pictures showed him holding winning baseball trophies, shooting basketballs or hugging team members after a just-scored soccer goal. All the pictures gave this feel of Charlie always being at the center of everything. Instead, I had grown up isolated in a Garden on a mountain where most of my play was with Susie or alone in my own imagination.

 

What struck me too was how carefree and happy everyone looked. I would have stared back from similar pictures hurt and hollow. Maybe growing up like this explained Charlie’s cavalier quality. He could lock himself out, forget his wallet, change plans on a whim because he had never had any reason to be more careful; everything for him had always been fixable. He could love and love again because his deepest pillars of love remained firmly on their foundations. I guarded love more carefully. Mine didn’t flit or cavort. Once embedded, my love grew deep and tenacious and could only be ripped up; thick clumps of me like earth would cling to its torn roots, roots now exposed and already dying. A whispering voice, an intractable habit, warned me again not to become too entangled. I shook my head trying to clear the thought, as if shoeing away a buzzing mosquito.

[Excerpt Landslide, Page 116]

My animals were separated by four mending Bonsai. Most had severed branches like amputees. One had a long crack in its main trunk and was slowly dying. All its leaves had gone, scattered like litter. It had taken Fernando and his men more than two weeks to repair the irrigation system and rebuild and reinforce the whole hill after the Landslide. Instead of waiting for another Bonsai Room to be built, Mom had immediately replanted those Bonsais that were strong enough. Six Bonsai had been lost completely. Sometimes, I thought Mom looked for them without realizing. At different moments I found her by the Landslide, lost in stillness, her green eyes searching in a way that seemed if she did not see at all.

[Excerpt Landslide, Page 59]

I held Anna with one hand, while loading the dishwasher with the other. She had her bottle and was tilting her head back to suck on it.

 

“Took my love, took it down,” the radio sang. “Climbed a mountain and I turned around.”

 

I froze. It was Charlie singing. It was his voice I heard, not that of Fleetwood Mac.

 

“And I saw my reflection in snow covered hills

Until a Landslide brought me down.”

 

Charlie’s voice was rich, melodious; I saw his face lost in the notes as it always was at his piano.

 

“Oh mirror in the sky what is love?

Can the child within my heart rise above?

Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?

Can I handle the seasons of my life?”

 

I gripped onto the sink. I was shattering. Oh, Charlie . . .

 

“Well I’ve been afraid of changes

Cause I’ve built my life around you.

But time makes you bolder,

Even children get older

And I’m getting older too.”

 

I could see him rocking Tabitha. Then he was driving me to Betty’s Café on our second date.

 

“Oh take my love take it down.

Climb a mountain and turn around.

And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills, Well the landslide will bring it down.”

 

I slumped to the floor. Terror closed over my heart. All I could do was rock, rock, trying to hold the terror off. Anna swayed with me, sucking her milk in my trembling arms.

[Excerpt Landslide, Page 364]

I could hear Maria coming. They would make this real; if they caught me it would be true. It could not be true, not ever. Susie moved toward me, but I shoved her out of the way. Maria called for Fernando. He caught me before I could go down the Landslide.

 

I tried to turn on him but his arms were strong. I started kicking him as hard as I could, driving my shoes into his shins. He grunted, but didn’t release me. Instead, he sank down with me sitting on his lap, and he pinned my legs under his. I slammed my head back against his shoulder. Fast, so I couldn’t evade him, he shifted so one of his arms now pinned both of mine, while the other arm locked my head against his chest. I fought to break free, but Fernando was unyielding.

 

“Let me go!”

“I can’t Niña,” Fernando said, “Not until you calm down.”

“I’ll kill you,” I screamed at him.

“If that would make it better, Niña, I swear I would let you.” His voice was scratchy, broken. In it, I could hear his crying.

[Excerpt Landslide, Pages 235-236]

Mom said what made Jay such a good photographer was that he was exceptionally patient. When he sensed a shot, he waited, some-times for days. Mom said she couldn’t count how many times she had watched with him while the clouds came and went, while morning turned to night. Just when she had been looking at the same tree or village or road for so long that there was nothing left to see, the sun would come or go, or the clouds would shift just right. That was when Jay took his shots.

[Excerpt Landslide, Page 8]