A Theory of Small Earthquakes Page 19

  “I’ll tell you what’s not fair,” Mark said, his voice rising. “It’s not fair that you’ve been bullshitting me for ten years.”

  Alison froze.

  “You’ve been leading me on, telling me you wanted another kid,” Mark said. “And I’ve been stupid enough to believe you. I’m done with that now.”

  Alison’s heart slowed.

  Mark yanked the car back onto the main road, tires spinning, wheels spitting gravel.

  “You tell me if you ever want another baby. I’m not asking you again.”

  Mark was as angry as Alison had ever seen him. But all she felt was relief.

  Two years and one deep-freeze later, Alison rose from her post outside Mark’s bedroom, knees creaking. MAYBE WE’D BE HAPPY NOW, she thought, IF I’D AGREED TO HAVE A CHILD THEN.

  She went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of Peet’s. Zoe’s blue Le Creuset pot was sitting on the counter, washed and waiting for Zoe to take it home and refill it with lentil soup or pasta sauce or chicken stew.

  Alison turned the kitchen radio on to Morning Edition. “An earthquake of magnitude 6.5 shook California’s central coast moments ago,” Steve Inskeep was saying. “It was felt as far south as Los Angeles and as far north as San Francisco.”

  “In Paso Robles,” Inskeep went on, “two women died when the quake destroyed the city’s 1892 clock tower and the adjacent building. Their bodies were found in the rubble.”

  Why do I live here, Alison asked herself for the second time in an hour. She glanced at the clock on the wall. 6:05 AM. Too early to call Zoe. Anyway, Alison knew what Zoe would say; she’d said it all before. “Your ambivalence made you leave me, and it made you check out on Mark. If you ever make up your mind to be closer to him, he’ll be right there, waiting for you.”

  Alison had never told Zoe that Mark wanted another baby, or that Alison was afraid to say yes for reasons only Zoe could understand.

  Zoe was a great friend to Alison, a great friend to Corey, and a great friend to their family. It had taken Alison twenty years to realize what Zoe wasn’t: put on earth to take care of Alison. Much as both of them might wish she did, Zoe didn’t have the power to fix what ailed Alison’s character or her circumstances. So Alison had grown pickier about the damaged parts of herself that she brought to Zoe to repair.

  Also, Zoe had been distant lately, a sure sign she was dating someone. She didn’t talk to Alison about the women she slept with, but Alison could always tell. She’d show up with bluish shadows beneath her eyes, a new scarf wrapped in a new way around her neck, an unfamiliar name tossed into the conversation once, twice, then never mentioned again.

  The first few times it happened, Alison panicked, thinking, This is how we’ll lose her. Eventually she learned to wait out Zoe’s affairs. Zoe always came back, drenching them in her lavish attention, posting flyers on the fridge as if it were a café bulletin board, dragging the three of them to gallery openings, poetry slams, and always, always demonstrations: for gay rights, against the cover-up of the Enron scandal, against the pending war in Iraq.

  Alison applied the theory of small earthquakes to Zoe’s affairs. She chose to see them as tiny tremors that might prevent a bigger quake. As long as Zoe was having regular releases of her indefatigable sexual energy, Alison figured, Zoe was less likely to fall in love, to start her own family, to disappear from their lives.

  Alison set the kettle on the stove, gazing at her reflection in the shiny stainless steel. Even in the pale dawn light she could see the creases that puckered her mouth, the coarse white curlicues erupting from her mane of auburn hair.

  Suddenly the kettle rocked on the burner. The pots and pans on the hanging rack clanged. Just an aftershock, Alison prayed. Please.

  The shaking stopped. Alison took a deep breath, turned the kettle off, and went upstairs to wake Corey for school. She knocked on his door, called his name. She knocked again, heard nothing, and took the opportunity to penetrate the forbidden fortress of his room.

  Her eyes landed on the splatter of socks and underwear on the floor. “If you can make a basket from the three-point line,” she’d asked him the night before from her permitted position in his doorway, “why can’t you land a T-shirt in a hamper?” Corey had pulled the shirt off his back, rolled it into a ball, and tossed it into the hamper. “Nothing but net,” he’d bragged, stepping toward her, lifting his palm for a high five. Alison had slapped his palm, barely able to contain her pathetic gratitude.

  As usual, his desk was buried under the detritus of his life: manga magazines, empty CD cases, baseball caps, outdated notes brought home for his parents’ signatures, scribbled notes for the songs he loved to write—sweet, soft tunes until recently; now harsh, pounding raps with lyrics Alison tried not to understand. His bookshelves were loaded with trophies for soccer and softball games from his grade school days, basketball since he’d changed sports in middle school.

  The daffodil yellow walls were grayish now, spider-webbed by a decade’s worth of earthquakes large and small. Whenever she and Mark threatened to repaint them, Corey begged them not to “ruin his life” by taking down the keepsakes he’d spent years putting up. The black and orange Giants pennant Zoe had bought him at Candlestick Park. The blue and gold Warriors pennant Mark had bought him at the Oakland Coliseum. Posters of his current heroes, Allen Iverson, Rosa Parks, Bob Marley, Tupac Shakur. Photos of desert sunsets, snowcapped mountains, and bare-breasted tribeswomen ripped from Mark’s old National Geographic s. Photos of rappers draped in fur coats and big-bottomed women ripped from Vibe.

  The wall Corey saw from his pillow was reserved for his most treasured collection: an ever-changing, multilayered, push-pinned collage of snapshots, the storyboards of his life to date. There was tousle-haired, two-year-old Corey, making macaroni art with Zoe at their kitchen table. Corey bundled in wool and fleece, shoveling sand into a green plastic pail on socked-in Stinson Beach. Corey on Mark’s shoulders, laughing ecstatically at something off camera at the annual How Berkeley Can You Be? Parade. Corey at ten, shooting baskets in their driveway with Zoe. Corey at twelve, building a snowman outside their Tahoe cabin with Alison and Mark.

  The quality of the collection had suffered from the advent of digital photography. The latest additions were dull computer printouts; there would be no more glossy prints. There was Corey a few months before, playing his first game for the Berkeley High freshman basketball team, sprinting down center court, managing to keep both his macho posturing and his baggy shorts up while he ran. Corey a few weeks before, mugging for Alison’s camera, ironing his size five thousand jeans before school. Corey and Mark at the dinner table a few nights before, caught by Alison in a rare, precious moment of actual conversation.

  Sighing, Alison traced Mark’s profile with her finger. He’s such a good dad, she thought. He doesn’t deserve this trouble with Corey, and he doesn’t deserve the trouble with me. He’d changed diapers, gone to more parent–teacher meetings than she had, spent long nights discussing every Corey-related decision with her. He’d taught Corey how to shoot a basketball, make hot chocolate, build a fire in the woodstove. Like Corey’s relationship with Alison, the connection between Mark and Corey had been effortless and joyous—until now.

  Alison turned and gazed at her sleeping son. Even at rest, his face was dimmed by adolescence, like the fog that brought the curtain down early on Bay Area summer days. Until he’d started at Berkeley High, Corey had been a straight-A student. Now that they mattered, his grades had plummeted to Cs and Ds, barely good enough to keep him eligible for the team. Most worrisome of all, he’d dropped his friends from elementary and middle school, and he’d started hanging out with a bunch of boys who seemed even more basketball obsessed and less interested in schoolwork than he was.

  Alison laid her hand lightly on Corey’s chest, feeling its certain beat. Just be okay, she willed him. Everything else in my life, every building, every government, every religion on earth can collapse, as long as you�
�re okay.

  22.

  oakland

  December 2003

  Alison stepped out of Corey’s room, closed the door behind her, and knocked on it again, louder this time. When she heard him mumble, “I’m up,” she went downstairs to “make his breakfast.” Most days, this consisted of either handing him a granola bar or fighting with him about the importance of eating a real breakfast and then handing him a granola bar. Keeping hope alive, she put out a box of whole-grain Oatios, a quart of organic milk, and the Peter Rabbit bowl he’d insisted on eating every meal out of when he was two.

  Ten minutes later, Corey’s size twelve Air Jordans came clomping down the stairs. “Hi, Mom,” he greeted her.

  “Morning, Pickle,” Alison said, surprised by his sweetness. She noticed he was wearing a Phat Farm shirt she’d never seen before. She wondered where he’d gotten the money to buy it.

  “Mo-o-m,” he complained. “Don’t call me that.”

  Second surprise of the morning: Corey poured himself a bowl of cereal and started shoveling dripping spoonfuls into his mouth. “Where’s Dad?” he asked.

  “Work, I guess.”

  Corey paused mid-slurp. “What’s up with you guys?” he asked.

  Alison’s heart sank. Zoe must be right. Corey was acting out because of the distance between his parents. “What do you mean?” she hedged.

  “Come on, Mom. You and Dad never hang out. You don’t even yell at me together anymore.”

  “We don’t yell at you.”

  Corey shot her an annoyed look. “Mom. I’m thirteen. I’m not stupid.”

  “Dad and I have both been working really late,” she said. “If we slept in the same room, we’d wake each other up.”

  And they say teenagers lie to their parents, Alison thought. “Also,” she added, “Dad and I haven’t been . . . close lately.”

  Corey stopped eating and stared into his cereal bowl. “Honey.” Alison wanted to pull him into her lap and hold him. “Every relationship has its ups and downs. We’ll be fine.”

  “I guess you guys are going through a major down.” Corey swallowed another spoonful of cereal. “Same as you and me.”

  “Dad and I love each other. Same as you and me.”

  Alison glanced at the clock. If Corey didn’t leave the house in thirty seconds, he was going to be late for school. If he was late for school, he’d be kicked off the basketball team. If he was kicked off the team, he’d lose the only thing he seemed to care about.

  “You gotta go,” she said, as she did every morning.

  Corey stood and shrugged into his backpack, a back-to-school gift from Zoe. On his third day, he’d brought it home covered with strange symbols—gang symbols, Alison feared. She’d sneaked into his room when he was sleeping, snatched it, then emptied and washed it. The markings hadn’t come out.

  “I’ll pick you up after practice,” she said.

  “Can’t Zoe do it?”

  Alison wondered whether Corey was trying to keep her from talking to his coach or if Zoe were a more desirable chauffeur. She suspected both were true. Neither made her happy.

  “Sor-ree. You’ll just have to handle ten whole minutes in the car with your old mom.” Alison was trying to keep it light. These days, she was always trying something with Corey. Trying to be stricter than she naturally was or wanted to be. Trying to lift him out of his sullen, surly moods. Trying to sneak in a bonding moment when he wasn’t paying enough attention to push her away.

  Mothering Corey used to be the most natural thing she’d ever done. Why did she have to try to be close to him just because he was bigger and older?

  Shoulders hunched, backpack flopping, Corey shuffled toward the front door. “Peace out,” he called, and slammed the door behind him.

  At four o’clock that afternoon, an hour before practice ended, Alison drove to the Berkeley High gym. She needed to see Corey happy and animated. She needed to see that he was still good at something, that he still cared about something—even if it was just a stupid ball game.

  She heaved the heavy gym door open, stepped onto the court, and surveyed the boys shooting and dribbling at the other end. Corey was usually easy to pick out; he was the second-tallest boy on the team and the only white kid. She didn’t see him.

  Alison raked her eyes over the players again. Corey wasn’t there.

  Coach Davis barked, “Give me ten laps” and walked toward Alison. There was no good news in his step.

  “I sent him home,” Davis said, his voice barely audible above the thundering slap and squeal of sneakers on varnished wood. “He skipped practice yesterday. So he doesn’t get to work out today.”

  “But he’s not home.” Alison felt ill. “And he told his . . . godmother that you benched him yesterday.”

  “Would have if I could have. But he never showed.”

  The coach blew a whistle that hung from a plastic lanyard around his neck. It looked like something a grandchild might have made for him. Alison wondered if Coach Davis had a family, if a child of his had ever made him sick with worry.

  “Pick up the pace,” Davis yelled at the players. Alison stared at the boys jogging around the perimeter of the gym, as if Corey would materialize if she looked hard enough.

  “He missed two days last week too,” Davis said. “Kid’s on shaky ground. Bad grades, bad attitude. Been like that for a while.”

  Alison’s stomach roiled. Where had Corey been? “I know about his grades,” she said. “I didn’t know he’s been missing practice.”

  Davis blew his whistle, two shrieking blasts. The boys stopped and turned to him like show dogs at attention, awaiting his next command.

  “Let me see some layups,” Davis shouted. The boys divided themselves into two wriggling lines. The first boy on each line in turn ran up to the basket, dropped the ball in, retrieved it, bounced it to the next shooter, ran to the back of the line, and did it again. Their movements were so smooth, so choreographed. They looked more like a dance troupe than a gangly group of thirteen-year-olds.

  “Boy’s been mouthing off to me,” Davis added. “Ignoring what I tell him, hotdogging on the court. So I benched him a couple times. He wasn’t happy about it. They never are.”

  “He didn’t tell me.” Alison twisted her car keys in her hands.

  Davis glanced at her, then back at the court. “I been coaching kids a long time,” he said. “I can tell which ones got real problems and which ones are just trying it on for size. Corey’s a good kid. He’ll settle down. But the time to get on him is now. So it don’t get more serious than it is.”

  Alison was hot with worry and shame. She wanted to ask Coach Davis how to stay on Corey exactly. How to keep it from getting more serious than it was.

  “Would you call me the next time he misses practice?” she asked.

  “I wish I could,” Davis said. “But I got three teams. Fifty kids to keep track of. Half of ’em got something going wrong in their lives most of the time. Serious stuff, I mean. Not like your boy.”

  Coach Davis watched his team, his hand on his whistle. “Tell you what. I’ll give you my cell number. You can call me to check up on him.”

  “Thanks. His dad and I will talk to him tonight. Maybe I won’t have to bother you again.”

  “Can’t hurt to hope,” Coach Davis said dubiously. He turned back to his team.

  Alison got in her car and drove slowly past Martin Luther King Park, where Berkeley High kids were always playing hacky sack and smoking pot before, during, and after class.

  The lawn was littered with nests of homeless people. A woman in rags, her face creased and crumpled, sat talking to herself on a bench. The swings in the little playground hung empty. Her heart leapt at the sight of a boy sitting on the Peace Wall, a red Berkeley High sweatshirt hood shadowing his face, his long legs dangling over the mosaic of hand-painted tiles. Alison pulled over. He was Corey’s size and build, but he wasn’t Corey.

  Corey had painted one of those peace tiles a c
ouple years before, at the Berkeley Y’s summer camp. Alison had sent him there for the same reason she’d sent him to Oakland public schools, the same reason they’d used Zoe’s Berkeley address to enroll him in Berkeley High—so he’d get to know all kinds of kids. So he wouldn’t grow up to be a racist or a snob. So he’d grow up to be a good person. Not the kind of person who cuts practice, lies to his coach, lies to his parents.

  Sighing, Alison turned the Saab toward Shattuck. She drove past the kids clustered in the doorways of Starbucks, Taco Bell, Mel’s Diner. She scoured the crowds lining up for the 5:30 movies outside the UA multiplex. No Corey.

  Her cell phone rang. “Did you talk to the coach?” Zoe asked.

  “He cut practice yesterday. The coach sent him home today. I’m driving around looking for him right now.” Suddenly Alison was fighting tears. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “That can’t be right. I picked him up at the gym yesterday.”

  “Inside or outside?”

  After a moment, Zoe said, “Outside.”

  “He’s been lying. A lot.” Alison was crying now. She pulled into a space in front of Jamba Juice. “He even lied to you.”

  “Teenagers lie,” Zoe said. “That’s the only control they have over their lives. Try and keep some perspective. He’s not shooting heroin. Or his classmates.”

  How does she do it? Alison wondered. She’s actually making me feel good about the fact that my son hasn’t killed anyone.

  “Go home,” Zoe said. “He’ll show up as soon as he gets hungry. Want me to come over?”

  Of course she did. But now that she knew how much her troubles with Mark were affecting Corey, she needed to fix that even more than she needed Zoe’s comfort. If she and Mark were going to get closer, she’d have to start counting on him instead of running to Zoe first.

  “Thanks,” Alison said. “But I’m going to call Mark so we can figure out what to do.”

  “You and Mark,” Zoe repeated.